SPACES 



N 




Class 

Book__ 
CopyiiglitK?. 



COPXRIGHT DEPOSm 



BOOKS BY PROF. JOHN C. VAN DYKE 



Art for Art's Sake. University Lectures on the Technical 
Beauties of Painting. With 24 Illustrations. 12mo. 

The Meaning of Pictures. University Lectures at the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. With 31 Illus- 
trations. 12mo. 

Studies in Pictures. An Introduction to Famous Gal- 
leries. With 40 Illustrations. 12mo. 

What is Art ? Studies in the Technique and Criticism of 
Painting. 12mo. 

Text Book of the History of Painting. With 110 Illus- 
trations. New Edition. 12mo 

Old Dutch and Flemish Masters. With Timothy Cole's 
Wood-Engravings. Superroyal 8vo 

Old English Masters. With Timothy Cole's Wood- 
Engravings. Superroyal 8vo 

Modern Franch Masters. Written by American Artists 
and Edited by Prof. Van Dyke. With 66 Full-page Illus- 
trations. Superroyal 8vo 

New Guides to Old Masters. Critical Notes on the 
European Galleries, Arranged in Catalogue Order. Frontis- 
pieces. 14 volumes. Sold separately 

American Painting and Its Tradition. As represented 
by Inness, Wyant, Martin, Homer, La Farge, Whistler, 
Chase, Alexander, Sargent. With 24 Illustrations. 12mo 

Nature for Its Own Sake. First Studies in Natural 
Appearances. With Portrait. 12mo 

The Desert. Further Studies in Natural Appearances. 
With Frontispiece. 12mo 
Illustrated Edition with Photographs by J. Smeaton Chase. 

The Opal Sea. Continued Studies in Impressions and Ap- 
pearances. With Frontispiece. 12mo 

The Mountain. Renewed Studies in Impressions and Ap- 
pearances. With Frontispiece. 12mo 

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Recurrent Studies 
in Impressions and Appearances. With 34 Illustrations. 
12mo 

The Open Spaces. Incidents of Nights and Days under 
the Blue Sky. 12mo 

The Money God. Chapters of Heresy and Dissent Con- 
cerning Business Methods and Mercenary Ideals in Ameri- 
ican Life. 12mo 

The New New York. A Commentary on the Place and 
the People. With 125 Illustrations by Joseph Pennell. 



THE OPEN SPACES 




^JAe^ Iffy/ta^'^ ^^e.j^r^t~ 



THE OPEN SPACES 



INCIDENTS OF NIGHTS AND DAYS 
UNDER THE BLUE SKY 



BY 



JOHN C. VAN DYKE 

AUTHOR OP "the DESERT," "tHE MOUNTAIN," "THE OPAL SEA,' 
"the grand CANYON," ETC. 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1922 






Copyright, 1922, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Printed in the United States of America 



Published March, 1922 




HaR29'22 

©CLA659414 



PREFACE— DEDICATION 

TO 

MURIEL MOORE 

A SCHOOLBOY, with shining morning face, creep- 
ing unwillingly to school, vainly striving to repeat 
declensions, fretted by the prospect of the day's 
confinement, and high overhead the honk of wild 
geese from the upper sky to fire his eye and set 
his fancy flying. Against the blue of spring, with 
broad wings beating back the southern breeze, 
the clamoring wedge was moving north by west. 
How strong the wings ! How sure the flight ! 
How keen the homing sense guiding through that 
vast expanse of air and sky ! Where away was 
the gray leader calling them ? Was the long 
course set for the prairie pools and linked water- 
ways of Minnesota or the unknown lakes of Brit- 
ish America ? And what a lure in that far cry, 
sounding clarion-like from the sky-space, calling 
down to the boy in the city street: 

"Follow ! Oh, follow ! 
Follow by stream and hollow ! 
Follow to No Man's Land !" 

A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts 
of youth are long, long thoughts. But the boy's 

[v] 



PREFACE-DEDICATION 

thought then seemed merely a fancy — a dream 
of traversing the unknown wilderness, of canoeing 
with trappers through wild-rice lakes and down 
strange rivers, of riding with Indians and shoot- 
ing big game on the prairies. The colored map 
of his school geography was vague beyond the 
line of the Mississippi. Back from the river 
there was a huge tract marked "Unexplored." 
That was the outermost rim of discovery. How 
should he ever follow the flock into that land of 
far horizons ? 

But, strange to say, the day-dreams of the boy 
became realities. Sooner than he could imagine 
they came to pass — came true. As a boy he was 
taken to the great Northwest; he followed in 
canoes the far waterways of the wild geese, he 
hunted the forests, rode the plains, and slept by 
the prairie pool. Again and again, through boy- 
hood and manhood, he came and went in the 
mountains, the Bad Lands, the buffalo ranges, 
the deserts. The wind's will was scarcely more 
free than the boy's will and the man's will. 

Alas ! for the changes brought in by civiliza- 
tion 1 The prairie has been ribbed by the plough, 
the forest has fallen before the axe, the water- 
ways have become turbid with commerce, even 
the deserts have been invaded, and the border- 
land has slowly slipped back to the inaccessible 

[vl] 



PREFACE— DEDICATION 

barrens of the north or the bare ranges of the 
south. Yet the whilom schoolboy still sees that 
wilderness of his youth— -sees^ it as clearly as he 
hears the long-ago honk of the gray leader calling 
from the blue sky of spring. The love and the 
lure of the wild have remained with him, and 
now, after many years, he is writing for you 
some happenings of those early days — living over 
again in memory the wonder of his lost youth. 

The record is not wholly of early years nor is 
it chronological or consecutive, for many of the 
incidents and observations occurred during latter- 
day revisitings. But linked together these hap- 
penings form a trail — my own trail in the open. 
The country through which it leads has become 
more or less familiar to so many that I need not 
describe it; but the life that it once knew has 
largely disappeared, and it is that I would con- 
jure up for you. Therefore will you retrace with 
me the now dim pathway ? Will you follow, fol- 
low, by stream and hollow, follow to No Man's 
Land? 

John C. Van Dyke. 

Rutgers College, 1922. 



[vii] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Preface v 

CHAPTER 

I. Sleeping Out i 

II. Riding the Open 22 

III. Riding the Ranges 41 

IV. The Cowboy 59 

V. Desert Days 78 

VI. Trailing in Moccasins 102 

VII. Mountain-Forest Trails . . . . 125 

VIII. Canoe and Paddle 143 

IX. The River 163 

X. Trolling and Spearing 180 

XI. Trout Fishing 196 

XII. Game-Birds 217 

XIII. The Deer Family 237 

XIV. Wolves and Bears .,.,,. 253 



THE OPEN SPACES 

CHAPTER I 
SLEEPING OUT 

Almost everything creeps to cover at night — 
the birds to their boughs, the beasts to their lairs, 
and man to his bolted house. The night-prowlers 
— those with specially gifted eyes or noses — are 
only a few out of the many. The rank and file 
as soon as the sun has gone down begin to look 
about for shelter. A fear of the dark drives 
them into hiding. 

Even when man ventures to "sleep out," he 
does so with a canvas tent over him. His fore- 
fathers were less luxurious and got on with a 
lean-to thatched with boughs or a tepee wrapped 
with birch-bark or deerskins. But generations, 
time out of mind, have been afraid to sleep under 
the night sky unprotected. Some scrap of cover, 
some coign of seclusion, has always been deemed 
necessary. It might turn cold or wet, or the 
moon might shine in one's face and warp the 
features, or perchance the heavens might fall. 

[1] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

Besides, there was vision of the pestilence that 
walketh in darkness and ravening wolves that 
prey by night. 

In the country to the east of the Mississippi 
perhaps the tent is necessary. For instance, in 
the Adirondack or the Maine woods, one is always 
liable to be deluged by rain, and the ground is 
never entirely dry even in summer. It is not 
a good camping country, notwithstanding the 
thousands of tent-pegs driven there every year. 
Aside from the dampness, it is usually camping 
in a forest — something that is nearly as unsatis- 
factory as sleeping in a cave. Much romance and 
some poetry have been extracted out of sleeping 
under the pines with the flickering lights of the 
camp-fire thrown up on the red trunks and spread- 
ing boughs. Many a dawn I have watched the 
sprays of pine overhead grow into form and color 
with the coming light, while blue jays and Douglas 
squirrels chattered and barked at me from neigh- 
boring trees. It is an idyllic experience in the 
open forests of California, especially if you have 
company with you; but sleeping in the Eastern 
woods alone, or even in the northern Pacific 
woods, is dreary enough. The stars and the sky 
and the night wind are shut out. You hardlv 

[2] 



SLEEPING OUT. 

know when daylight comes or goes, for you can- 
not see the rising or the setting sun, and you can 
make no certainty ^of the weather, for you can- 
not see the clouds. A forest is usually good hunt- 
ing country for deer and bear, but it is not a 
comfortable place for the camper. He is too 
"cabined, cribbed, confined." 

Quite different from the forests are the great 
prairies and uplands of Dakota, Montana, and 
Wyoming. There the tent is quite superfluous, 
because during the long summer rainfall is infre- 
quent. You rest in the open, and by night or 
day can see around you in an immense ring. 
Cries in the night, the whimper of wolves, the 
grazing of horses, the sound of approaching hoofs, 
the rush of wind, the roll of thunder, can be 
rightly located and judged. You rest easily be- 
cause you know what is going on about you. 
And if sleep does not come there are the filmy 
clouds of the cirrus, the constellations slowly mov- 
ing to the west, the Milky Way powdered with 
infinite groupings of stars. What a never-ending 
source of wonder! And not entirely without 
practical uses to the camper. How many times 
under the open sky have I wakened and known 
the time of night by the position of certain bright 

[3] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

stars ! How many times have I ridden the open 
prairies at night laying my course by the North 
Star, or getting other bearings by the blazing 
splendor of Arcturus ! 

Any sort of a tent, in any country, isolates you 
from the world without. One of the unique 
scares of my life came to me in the foot-hills of 
the Big Horn Mountains, where one autumn I 
was camping under canvas with a companion. 
We had been hunting and the carcass of a deer 
was hanging from a small pinyon some fifty yards 
from the camp-fire. One night, sleeping in our 
figure-A tent with the door-flap pegged down, 
we were awakened by the catlike scream or yowl 
of a mountain-lion. Had we been in the open we 
might have seen him and perhaps taken a shot 
at him. As it was, we sat up in our blankets and 
wondered what to do. While poised there mo- 
mentarily in the darkness the tent-flap was sud- 
denly burst open by some large beast that sprang 
directly upon me. In warding him off I threw 
out both hands before me and they struck coarse 
hair. For a moment my heart stopped beating. 
Then the animal began to growl and I recognized 
my friend's setter dog. He had been sleeping 
outside by the burnt-out camp-fire, and, fright- 

[4] 



SLEEPING OUT 

ened by the cry, had dashed against the tent- 
flap and landed directly upon me. The moun- 
tain-lion had been inspecting the carcass of our 
deer in the pinyon. He could have dragged away 
or eaten everything in the camp for all that we 
could have known of him sleeping in our canvas 
tent. 

When in a strange land it behooves one always 
to sleep like a jack-rabbit — that is, with one eye 
open. A white tent in the moonlight, that every 
Indian or bear or wolf can recognize as easily as 
a camp-fire, is merely an advertisement of your 
presence. It puts blinders on your eyes and 
cotton in your ears, so that anything can sneak 
upon you. There may be no great danger threat- 
ening — usually there is none at all — but when you 
are alone in the wilderness you need all your 
senses about you, and each one of them acutely 
attuned. One night in Montana, camping near 
the edge of the Crow Indian Reservation, I was 
much concerned by the fact that several Indians, 
riding across country in the night, had discovered 
our camp. They halted some distance away and 
I could hear them talking among themselves. 
Our tent (taken along to please my companion) 
had betrayed us. The result was that I spent a 

C5} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

bad night, rifle in hand, holding guard over our 
horse-bunch a quarter of a mile down the river. 
Indians do not enjoy being shot up in a fight any 
more than palefaces, but they delight in horse- 
stealing. Stampeding a camper's horses at night 
is their great play, for the enjoyment of which 
they will run some risk. 

A similar experience, but with the advantage 
on my side, happened to me many years ago on 
the Mexican border, below Arivaca. An old trail 
leading over into Sonora crossed there, and near 
the boundary-line was a deserted adobe hut. 
Not far from the hut was a hole in the ground 
with some green water in it, called, by a stretch 
of the imagination, a **well.'' I was camped 
there because of the water, but I had no tent; 
neither did I sleep in the hut nor near the well. I 
stretched out my blankets in some thin greasewood 
and slept with my ear to the ground, knowing 
quite well that the border passes were runways of 
the marauder. In the middle of the night I was 
wakened by the sound of galloping horses and 
men's voices. Down from the north came five 
riders, their horses blowing, and they themselves 
muttering and cursing over some mishap. When 
they saw the hut they stopped and came together 

[6] 



SLEEPING OUT 

as though for a council of war. Then they de- 
ployed, surrounded the hut at a distance, and 
began helloing at the supposed occupant. Get- 
ting no answer, they fired two shots into the 
adobe. 

Still without response they dismounted, ap- 
proached, and finally found the hut deserted. 
There was some more violent swearing, and then 
they began a search for the water-hole, which 
they evidently knew was somewhere on the 
premises. My presence they never suspected, 
and I should have remained unseen had it not 
been for my horse, picketed a quarter of a mile 
beyond me. A horse can always be relied upon 
to get his owner into trouble, and my beast at 
this juncture let out a long, loud neigh. He had 
heard or winded the other horses and his social 
instincts were aroused. The men — they evi- 
dently were horse- thieves and were riding hard to 
get over the border and away from some sheriff's 
posse — pricked up their ears at once. One of 
them started in the direction of the staked horse, 
and unfortunately his way led my way. At thirty 
yards distance I called to him to stop. He 
jumped as though he had been shot at, and caught 
at his six-shooter. I quickly informed him that 

[7] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

if he drew his gun I would shoot. He desisted. 
What did he want? Water for their horses. 
Where was the well ? I told him. Who was I 
and what was I doing there ? Merely studying 
desert geology. Who were they ? — that was more 
important. No reply. They passed on down 
into Mexico, I watching them off the premises 
with my rifle on my knee. 

The moral of that tale is that had I been camped 
down in a foolish tent they could have located 
me instantly and shot me through the canvas. 
As it was, I had the advantage and could have 
bagged all five of them before they could have 
gotten into action. Of course such incidents are 
rare. One sleeps soundly night after night in the 
open, without even the whir of a night-hawk or 
the yelp of a coyote to ruffle his repose. I know 
of no safer place to sleep. Yet while in the 
Southwest I was frequently asked if I were not 
afraid to sleep alone in the desert. I always an- 
swered with another question: "Afraid of what ?" 
There is much greater danger in the city street. 
The only danger is from men, not beasts, and men 
are very scarce in the desert. Well, suppose you 
became ill ? But you do not get ill under the 
blue sky. It is in the town and in the hospital 

[8] 



SLEEPING OUT 

that people sicken and die. But suppose some- 
thing should bite you — a rattlesnake, for instance ? 
Yes, but suppose at home you fell down the porch 
steps and fractured your skull ? You are far 
more likely to meet with trouble on the porch 
than to be bitten by a rattlesnake. 

Occasionally in sleeping out one gets wet in 
summer showers, but that is a slight matter. 
The piece of tarpaulin, one half of which goes 
under you and the other half over you, and in 
which you wrap your blankets when riding, can 
usually be relied upon to shed the brunt of any 
short-lived storm. You lie on your back with 
your knees up, making something tent-shaped of 
the tarpaulin, and the water drains off. If it is 
a long storm with much rainfall the water will 
eventually get under you, and, if you have been 
foolish enough to make your bed in a hollow in- 
stead of on a slope, the water will get in at you. 
There is nothing for it but to get up and seek 
such shelter as rock or bush or tree will afford. 
But again such happenings are rare. The great 
camping country of the plains is arid and the 
conditions of sleeping out are ideal. 

That does not mean that the camper can dis- 
miss all care with the coming of the dark. Every 

[9] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

one who sleeps out does so with both ears listen- 
ing, and in his soundest sleep is partly conscious 
of keeping watch. Indians and horse-thieves do 
not bother him, for their coming or going is very 
infrequent; but he has to look out for his own 
outfit. Now the most important part of an out- 
fit is the horse-bunch. You can never aflfbrd to 
be left afoot in unsettled country by your horses 
slipping away from you. And all the plains 
horses know how to cut and run if the oppor- 
tunity ofiFers. Every one of them has a partner 
to whom he is devoted and from whom he is not 
willingly separated. If the partners are in camp 
together they are generally content, but look out 
if you take one of them away with you and leave 
the other behind. The one with you, at the first 
opportunity, will take his back track to join his 
partner and you will have great difficulty in 
catching him. A horse will sometimes go for 
seventy or a hundred miles hunting for his partner 
without stopping to eat or drink. 

Aside from these getaways there are occasional 
scares that must be reckoned with. In urban or 
suburban territory a horse's sense of sight or 
smell or hearing is very dull and almost negligible. 
He sees only a saddle or a wagon and smells 
[10] 



SLEEPING OUT 

only a measure of oats. But in the open the mus- 
tang or plains horse has very acute senses. And, 
being naturally something of a fool, he is always 
suspicious. If thirty-six hours before a bear 
has passed through where he is picketed, he soon 
catches the scent and is not to be quieted. Around 
and around on his picket-pin he will go hour 
after hour, head up and tail up, stopping every 
few minutes to snort at the air. If he is not 
double hoppled he will pull the pin and run. 
Any moving animal is likely to frighten a picketed 
horse — an elk, a mountain-lion, a gray wolf. 
And during a lightning-storm or a driving rain he 
may break away and get to timber, even if in- 
disposed to make a long run of it. 

And sometimes the camp supplies need watch- 
ing. Coyotes are always sneaking about a camp, 
nosing for something to eat, picking up refuse; 
and occasionally at night, if everything is very 
quiet, they will slip in and raid the grub-box or 
chew off a bit of greasy strap from a saddle, or 
jump for any provender that may be hanging in 
bags from trees. They are a very clever family, 
the coyote tribe, and can get what they want 
without getting into trouble quite as readily as 
the fox family. 

[ 11 } 



THE OPEN SPACES 

Even bears are fairly good camp-thieves, and 
in some of the national parks they are now very 
bold in their entrances and exits. In the Yellow- 
stone Park some twenty years ago a bear in camp 
one night broke into the bacon-box and was 
making a good meal when I interrupted him with 
an axe. Guns were not allowed in the park, and 
an axe was my only weapon. It was sufficient. 
The bear started on a run down a decline and 
through a meadow where I had seven horses 
picketed. The horses saw him coming, pulled 
their picket-pins, and ran for fifteen miles through 
the timber. It was four o'clock the next 
afternoon when I found them, bunched together 
under a slide of rock, high up on a mountain- 
side. 

After a week or more in camp all the night 
sounds become familiar to you, and only a few 
of them are disturbing. The whimper of coyotes 
just before daylight means nothing. They are 
usually harmless hoodlums, and oftentimes are 
good sentinels for you. As long as they keep up 
their whimpering, there is no dangerous prowler 
about; but their sudden silence and sneaking away 
may mean that a bear or a mountain-lion has 
come on the scene. The gray wolf has a deep 
[121 



SLEEPING OUT 

bass bay, but you seldom hear it near the camp. 
He is up in the mountains hustling mountain- 
sheep across a rock slide, or far away over the 
hills with brother wolves running a mule-deer in 
relays. He is usually too careful of his skin to 
be seen of a camper. Bears with their grunting 
woof are in the same class. The garbage-can 
bears of the national parks are not typical of those 
in the wild. Even the big silver-tip in the Rocky 
Mountain country has to be sought out and run 
down. He never hunts you. As for the grizzly, 
he is no more. His habitat was the Coast Range 
of California, but the gun, the trap, and poison 
have done for him. 

The more frequent night sounds about a camp 
are of horses grazing, stamping, snorting, or 
whinnying, the call of belated quail, the whir of 
bats, or the hoot of owls. At certain times of the 
year when birds are migrating, there will be the 
honk of geese, the far sky-call of crane, perhaps 
the whistle of curlew, or the pipe of golden plovers 
moving in flocks. It is not easy to see bird 
flights by night unless the flocks are flying very 
low. When there is a full moon you occasionally 
get strings of ducks or brant in silhouette as they 
cross the moon's disk, reminding you perhaps of 

[13] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

some Japanese print by Okio or Hiroshige; but 
usually the night fliers are not seen. 

This is especially true of the smaller birds that 
seem to move north or south by night, perhaps 
for protection from the hawks. The swallows, 
warblers, thrushes, larks, bobolinks, tanagers mi- 
grate in large straggling flocks, and keep up an 
incessant chirping and twittering, but they are too 
high up to be made out. The larger birds usu- 
ally move by day. Some of them, like the hawks, 
have no fear [of enemies, and go by overhead 
with great swiftness. So far as I have observed, 
they make no sound and attract no attention. 

But, except in periods of migration, birds do 
not usually fly or move around at night. The 
majority of the bird family goes to bed early with 
its head tucked under its wing. Only the killers, 
such as the owls or bats, remain out. And about 
the only bird sound one hears in the dark, except 
the hooting of owls, is the dismal note of the poor- 
will. He is the same bird as the whippoorwili 
of the Mississippi Valley, though in the Rocky 
Mountain region he shortens his call. But not 
his persistence. He keeps reiterating "poor- 
will** for hours at a time, until the maddened 
camper would gladly wring his neck. 
[14] 



SLEEPING OUT 

The smaller animals, the mice, rats, and weasels, 
move about continuously after dark; and every 
camper knows that the rabbits begin to stir just 
before sunset, and that in the early dawn they 
are settling themselves for the day in some thin 
bush or bunch of grass. Riding by moonlight I 
have often seen the jack-rabbits feeding on dry 
grass, dashing off occasionally as in play, caper- 
ing in circles, or jumping straight up in the air. 
I have never, at any time, caught one of them 
sleeping or nodding or with his eyes shut. I 
doubt very. much if the jack-rabbit ever sleeps, 
just as I am certain that he never drinks, and that 
he can live an indefinite time on nothing moister 
than dry grass. On the desert the water ration 
of every animal is reduced to a minimum, and the 
ground-squirrels, kangaroo rats, and gophers are 
in the category with the jack-rabbit in getting on 
without it. As for the prairie-dog, he, too, is 
denied water, but he gets moisture from grass 
and roots. Any of the desert rodents will eat 
green herbage when they can f.nd it, but a few 
of them can flourish without it. 

The reptile contingent need hardly be reckoned 
with at night, though every new camper has his 
vague apprehension of snakes crawling over him 
[15] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

in the dark. In Montana one night I was awak- 
ened by a feeling similar to some one's finger 
being drawn slowly along my back-bone. I was 
sleeping on the ground, rolled in blankets Indian 
fashion; but I could feel that moving something 
through the blankets very plainly. I knew in- 
stinctively that it was a snake, and lay still for 
a moment wondering whether I should roll over 
on him and try to crush him or roll away from him. 
I decided, rather spasmodically, that valor did 
not require a Laokcoon contest and that I had 
better roll away from him. How I got started I 
hardly knew, but once in action I did not stop 
until I was ten feet away. He rattled, but as it 
was too dark to see him, I again decided that valor 
did not call for a fight. I crept carefully back, 
got hold of a corner of my tarpaulin and jerked it 
out from under the snake. I then moved some 
hundred yards away, leaving him to rattle himself 
quiet. Again, a few evenings after, and camped 
farther on, while going out in the dark with an 
axe and a picket-pin to stake a horse, I caught the 
rattle of a snake at the foot of a sage-bush. I 
chopped into the bush until the rattle stopped, 
but could not see the snake. 
With these two exceptions — and I think they 

[16] 



SLEEPING OUT 

were exceptional — I have never known snakes to 
move about at night. They have not a night eye 
and are particularly averse to chilly evening winds. 
Basking in the sun by day and creeping into a 
hole or under a rock by night is their usual habit. 
Lizards, horned toads, Gila monsters are not dif- 
ferent. As for trap-door spiders, tarantulas, 
scorpions, they are not great travellers. They 
usually have holes in the sand or sod, or under a 
rock, and the camper has to look sharply if he 
sees them at all. Occasionally one creeps into 
the blankets or gets into a shoe or a hat, but 
that is because the camper has settled down 
in the wrong place, with blankets or clothing 
tossed atop of a spider settlement or a scorpion's 
nest. 

Animals and their movements or cries by night 
are things that the camper eventually accepts as 
he does the crackle of his camp-fire or the low 
growl of his dog. They are passing events. A 
more lasting impression is that which he sees 
above him as he lies on his back — the night sky. 
He never quite gets over the wonder of the great 
arch and that vast belt made up of infinite stars 
called the Milky Way. The stars seem studded 
as in a broad band or architectural rib that reaches 
[17] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

up and under the huge purple vault. One is at 
first attracted by the blaze of the more prominent 
stars, the green-white Sirius, the blue Vega, the 
orange Betelgeuse, the pearly yellow Capella. If 
the air is very thick they will seem to twinkle; if 
you are in high regions where the air is thin they 
will appear quite still, shining and splendid. 
Their color in high altitudes becomes more ap- 
parent, and you perhaps marvel over the white- 
ness of Sirius which indicates youth, or the orange 
of Betelgeuse which points to age and decline. 
Ah ! the wonder of those great sun-stars, their 
magnitude, their heat and light, their swift flight 
through space, and the enormous pull of their 
gravity ! 

But you are clutching at fragments, details of 
the pattern. The bright stars merely happen to 
be those near our world. The bowl of the Dipper 
contains no light within the square perceptible 
to the unaided eye, but the telescope has discov- 
ered over a thousand stars in that space, and the 
larger the telescope the more stars there are to 
appear. The Milky Way that looks as though 
strewn with diamond-dust is made up of millions 
of stars. The newer telescopes make of that por- 
tion of the heavens a bright shining field, caused 
[18] 



SLEEPING OUT 

by countless far-away stars whose lights crowd 
together on the plate. What is the splendor of 
Aldebaran or Arcturus to this stupendous glimpse 
of the infinite — this bringing forward of countless 
suns from the depths of space! And, wonder 
upon wonder, they are all moving at terrific paces 
in enormous orbits ! The entire belt of the Milky 
Way is supposed to be moving as a mass through 
space. Whither? Whence the measureless en- 
ergy that started or keeps such colossal bodies in 
motion? And where and what are we in this 
mighty scheme of things ? Are we anything more 
than petty animalculae clinging to a cold discarded 
fragment of a sun ? You turn over in your blan- 
kets and listen to the yap of a distant coyote. 
Along that Milky Way lies madness. 

Down from the sky comes the coolness of the 
upper-air stratum. It is almost a nightly occur- 
rence in the arid regions, even in the heat of sum- 
mer, for the temperature to fall forty or fifty 
degrees. You drop off to sleep with a warm breeze 
blowing over you. By midnight you wake up 
and begin feeling about for blankets. Perhaps 
before dawn you are burrowing in the sand to 
get warm. What has become of the one hundred 
and twenty degrees Fahrenheit that baked you 

[19} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

at noonday ? The heat has radiated upward and 
the cold has descended to take its place. 

What a clean cold ! How scentless, saltless, 
stainless ! It is the purest air in the world — this 
air which people at one time considered deadly, 
and which even those of to-day avoid by creep- 
ing into a house or a tent. Ah ! how you sleep ! 
And how unconcernedly you breathe in the oxygen 
of the blue — nature's great restorer ! Even the 
warm air that blows immediately after dusk has 
some of this life-giving power. You feel it 
streaming over your face and through your hair 
and it has the soothing effect of fairy fingers — or 
perhaps some loved woman's hands that once had 
the power to bring you sleep. 

What a strange feeling, sleeping under the wide 
sky, that you belong only to the universe. You 
are back to your habitat, to your original environ- 
ment, to your native heritage. With that feeling 
you snuggle down in your blankets content to 
let ambitions slip and the glory of the world pass 
you by. The honk of the wild goose, calling from 
the upper space, has for you more understanding 
and the stars of the sky depth more lure. At 
last you are free. You are at home in the infinite, 
and your possessions, your government, your 
[20] 



SLEEPING OUT 

people dwindle away into needle-points of insig- 
nificance. Danger ? Sleep on serenely ! Danger 
lies within the pale of civilization, not in the 
wilderness. 



[21] 



CHAPTER II 
RIDING THE OPEN 

There never was greater joy for the nature- 
lover than riding into the unknown. Astride of 
a good plains horse, in unexplored country — not 
knowing what was coming over the next divide, 
or what lay in the far valley, or what new world 
would be disclosed from the top of yonder moun- 
tain — the lure of the unexpected lent eagerness to 
the ride. The nipping air of early morning, the 
long shafts of the rising sun, the great arch of the 
shifting blue overhead, the far vistas of table- 
lands and mountains all added to your zest. You 
were off and away. Nothing could stop you. 

Something of your pleasure depended upon 
your horse. In Indian days, when unexplored 
country lay almost everywhere west of the Missis- 
sippi, the riding was not always enjoyable because 
the Indian cayuse that one rode was a combina- 
tion of fool and devil. He was a wild mustang of 
the plains that had been run down, lassoed, bru- 
tally broken in a few days, and left to nurse his 
enmity forever after. And he never failed to 
[22] 



RIDING THE OPEN 

keep that enmity alive. Every time you lassoed 
him there was a fight. When bridled with a bit 
of rawhide or rope, and saddled with nothing more 
than a flap of buffalo-skin, there was another 
fight. He glared at you, with ears laid back and 
lips half bared, as though he would gladly eat 
you. Mounting him was a feat of vaulting which 
sometimes landed you on his back and sometimes 
did not. If you landed 'rightly, it was always a 
question of whether you would stay. The born 
impulse of the cayuse was to buck. He curved 
his back and went into the air. When he came 
down it was with stiff legs and a sharp back-bone 
that made you wish you were elsewhere. Two 
or three jounces of this kind and you were not 
sorry to get back to earth. Riding a bucking 
cow-pony, with a deep-seated saddle in which one 
could get a stirrup hold, was not such a difficult 
affair; but keeping one's place on a barebacked 
Indian pony was quite another performance. 

The cayuse was never to be trusted at any 
time. You might ride him for hours or days or 
months, but he would always be waiting his time 
and planning trouble for you. One of his dearest 
tricks was to rear up on his hind legs, with any 
sharp little pull on the reins, and fall over back- 
[23] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

ward. The main object of that play was to catch 
you under him and squeeze the life out of you. 
Doubtless some of the violent rearing was due to 
mouth tenderness, and some of the falling back- 
ward to clumsiness; but bad intention was at the 
root of things. 

In swimming a river the same rearing and fall- 
ing over backward were carried out when the 
cayuse could feel his hind feet on the bottom; 
but his commoner trick in river-swimming was 
to get his head and neck down flat on the water 
and roll over with you. Nothing but a stiff rein 
and a rawhide quirt, well applied around the ears, 
could dissuade him from rolling. If he chanced 
to get you off so that you had to let go of him, 
he immediately seized the opportunity to pound 
you with his forefeet, very much as a deer in the 
water will sometimes turn and hit a following 
hound. A blow from an unshod hoof under such 
circumstances might be thought a matter of no 
great moment, but if you happened to be the one 
hit, you had reason to think otherwise. 

To give the devil his due, the cayuse had a 
number of good qualities that in some measure 
atoned for his viciousness. He was usually sure- 
footed and travelled almost anywhere that a 
[24] 



RIDING THE OPEN 

man would venture. In mountain ascents and 
descents he could pick his way along ledges, cross 
taluses of broken stone, and slide down declivities 
like a wild goat. Besides, he had intuitive cun- 
ning about boggy ground and quicksands, could 
feel his way across a mountain slide with his fore- 
feet, and in open country could go his thirty or 
forty miles a day without being worn or winded. 
He never had to be pastured, and if with com- 
panions, he was not hoppled. He picked his own 
food and got fat on cottonwood bark. If there 
was water near by he took it, but he could, if 
emergency required, get on for several days with- 
out it. Like his Indian master, he accommodated 
himself to his environment, whatever it was, very 
well, but he had "a heap bad heart.'* 

The Indians (those at the north particularly — 
the Sioux, Crows, and Cheyennes) were never very 
good company on a ride or a hunt. Their dis- 
position was brutal, sullen, unsocial, not to say 
quarrelsome. Hour after hour they would ride on 
without saying a word. If asked a question, the 
chances were two to one they would not answer. 
Each one looked after his own skin and cared 
nothing for the others. As for the women and 
children (if it were a band on the march), they, 
[25] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

too, looked after themselves. The papooses, 
lashed to a board or slung in a pouch, were loaded 
into a carryall made by skins bound to tepee- 
poles. Ponies dragged the tepee-poles as they 
might the wheelless shafts of a wagon. The pa- 
pooses were jounced and rolled and knocked about 
all day on the march, but they never cried. At 
evening when camp was made they were taken 
out and put down on the ground, whether heads 
up or feet up, in the sun or out of it, mattered not. 
Flies and mosquitoes ate them, but they made no 
murmur. They knew very well that no one 
would pay attention to them. 

The squaws pitched the tepees, got the meals, 
and did the camp work. The meal was generally 
a soup made up of everything edible that had 
been caught on the day's tramp. It was usually 
cooked in a huge pot. Any kind of meat, whether 
fish, flesh, or fowl, turtles, lizards, wild onions, 
carrots, sago-lilies, acorns — anything that any- 
body would eat — was flung into the pot. When 
meat ran short, one of the camp dogs furnished the 
basis of the soup. Always, with every Indian out- 
fit I have known, there was an abundant supply 
of snarling, quarrelling cur dogs, of all ages and 
degrees. On a march they brought up the rear, 
[26} 



RIDING THE OPEN 

with lolling tongues and slow, half-coyote trot. 
In swimming a river, after all the men, ponies, 
children, and squaws had crossed, this following 
of cur dogs could be seen standing and howling 
on the bank, afraid to take the water. Finally, 
one by one they would wade out, until beyond 
their footing, and then swim across — the old dogs 
first, and the whimpering puppies, snuffling water 
in and out of their noses, coming after. 

In riding, the chief and older men led the way 
and the younger bucks followed. Something to 
eat was uppermost in thought, and the quest of 
game was omnipresent. Riding with them was 
hardly a joy to the stranger; and, as for the In- 
dians themselves, I never saw any one of them 
give sign of pleasure in company, or over the 
weather fair or foul or the landscape far or near. 
They were obsessed with the more material things 
of daily existence, and beauty was something they 
probably could not see, and at any rate did not 
exclaim over. 

A rather unusual experience with the Indians 
at the south, especially in old Mexico, led me to 
think them devoid of any fine color sense. They 
recognized strong reds, blues, oranges, greens; 
but the rose and amethyst and pale-saffron tints 
[27] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

they did not see at all. And they were quite 
blind to pale shadows. Form they recognized 
largely by silhouette or outline rather than by 
bulk, and when you talked atmosphere and per- 
spective at them they were wholly at sea. With a 
primitive mind they saw things as men of the 
Stone Age might see them — that is, in outline. 
The Sioux and Cheyennes at the north were not 
different from the Indians of Mexico in this re- 
spect. 

Although the Sioux never was a good companion 
to ride with, he was always a fine rider and an 
excellent pathfinder in the wilderness. He be- 
longed to the buffalo days and was then a pic- 
turesque figure, if you did not know him too in- 
timately. Later on he degenerated, through 
white influences, into a hanger-on about agencies 
and towns, making occasional trips to old hunting- 
grounds in the summer seasons. In the early 
eighties, while riding the eastern Montana coun- 
try, I often met small bands of Crow or Sioux 
either camped or on the march. One day on the 
edge of the Bad Lands, hunting antelope, I saw 
what I supposed to be the rear end of my game 
vanishing around the side of an isolated butte. 
Every hunter knows the cunning trick, sometimes 
[28] 



RIDING THE OPEN 

resorted to by the antelope, of going around a 
butte, keeping the butte between you and him, 
and finally streaking off across the prairie from 
another point of the compass than you antici- 
pated. I was aware of this play, and to head it 
off I put my horse to a run, riding around the 
opposite side of the butte and hoping to meet 
my antelope coming toward me. Instead of 
that, as I turned the far end of the butte, I ran 
into a band of Indians seated about a camp-fire, 
drinking libations of soup out of a battered agency 
wash-boiler. A hawk falling upon a bevy of 
quail could not have caused a quicker scattering 
of forces. I was riding so fast that I could not 
stop, and so dashed right through the camp, out 
on the other side, and across the prairie beyond. 
Wild yells followed after me, and I had reason 
to anticipate bullets, but I never stopped or turned 
around or gave sign of even having seen them. 

When the great northern ranges were utilized 
for big herds of cattle and the smoke of the 
round-up camp was seen under the cottonwoods 
along the Tongue and the Powder, straggling In- 
dians would frequently drift into camp and ask 
for food. Their appetites were something ex- 
traordinary. I never knew an Indian to refuse 
[29] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

anything to eat. Potted ham and dried-apple 
pie preferred, but they never objected to pans full 
of white baked beans — "soldier beans'* they called 
them — and saleratus biscuit. Their stomachs 
seemed so many bottomless pits, and atop of food 
they poured basins of coffee that disappeared as 
though down a prairie-dog hole. 

After the meal was over they gathered up in 
empty cans all the bacon rinds, bones, and scraps of 
bread to take home to the squaws and papooses. 
Sometimes the squaws were present and able to 
look after themselves. One time at a sun-dance 
in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation I sat in a 
circle with members of the band while the head 
men and chiefs gave out rations obtained from 
the agency store. After the distribution a fat 
old squaw, who sat next me on the ground, got 
out a cheap case-knife, cut the top of a quart-can 
of tomatoes, and drank off the whole quart with- 
out ever taking the can down from her mouth. I 
was so much amused that I could not help laugh- 
ing in her face, but she calmly wiped her mouth 
with the back of her hand and smiled as though 
there was nothing unusual in the proceeding. 

With the advent of the big herds of cattle upon 
the ranges of the Montana-Wyoming country 
[30] 



RIDING THE OPEN 

there came in a better class of horses. The mus- 
tang was reduced to "a five-dollar cut" (meaning 
you could cut out and buy any horse of an Indian 
bunch for five dollars), and a half-Oregon horse 
took his place. He was a little larger than the 
mustang, not quite so hardy or agile, but better 
broken and trained, especially in handling cattle. 
These horses usually knew their round-up work, 
and could cut out and drive cattle very well, but 
in other respects they were of limited brain power. 
Every horse is more or less stupid. He is per- 
haps the only animal that will shy at a news- 
paper or a dog or a bunch of leaves or a lantern, 
and yet he has been driven along roads and by 
such things for centuries. He is also about the 
only animal that will go into a field through a 
gate, go down to the bottom of the field, and, not 
finding a way out, will hang his head over the 
fence until he starves, waiting for some one to 
lead him out. A dog that scrambles under a 
gate and runs along for several hundred yards 
and then finds there is no exit, will turn about 
and go back to his original entrance under the 
gate; but a horse has not sense enough for that. 
"Horse sense," as the term was originally used, 
meant very limited sense. 
[31] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

The old time cow-horse was, of course, much 
cleverer than the horse of the stables, and usually- 
had all of his limited faculties about him. He 
knew rough ground and mountain climbing, and 
was bred to lassoing, throwing and holding; but 
at his best I always found him an obstinate, self- 
willed beast. He never changed his mind or 
heart about anything, and beating never improved 
him. In those big range days I rode frequently 
with the outfits, but often went off on side ven- 
tures for twenty or thirty miles alone. No horse 
I ever rode but put up a sturdy objection to this. 
I was taking him away from the other horses, 
and that in the equine code was a crime. He 
registered opposition from the start by refusing 
to go off a walk. Beaten with a quirt and jabbed 
with a spur, he would make a spurt forward only 
to drop into a trot, and then a walk, at the first 
opportunity. If you stopped for a moment to 
look at anything, he gradually edged his way 
around, facing toward the home camp; and when 
you started you had to twist him about or he 
would take you on the back track. If you dis- 
mounted to study a rock or a flower, you could 
not throw the reins on the ground and leave him 
to stand. He would sneak off in a moment, 
[32} 



RIDING THE OPEN 

carrying his head on one side and trailing the reins 
so that he would not step on them. If you ran 
after him, he at once broke into a run, and you 
were left alone on the prairie to get back to camp 
as best you could. 

When, after half a day of riding, and with no 
let-up of home insistence on the part of the horse, 
you finally turned and tried to make a big circle 
back to camp, you found your animal at once in 
a different mood. He pulled on the bit and was 
eager to run all the way back. If you held him 
in, he chafed, pranced, danced, cut side-capers, 
jounced you sore, did everything but walk or jog 
quietly. He never wanted to complete that cir- 
cle, but was persistently trying to clip slices off 
of it with short cuts. When you got back to 
camp perhaps you were more tired than the horse 
and, as you unsaddled him and turned him back 
into the bunch, you were well disposed to kick 
him; but nothing that you could do would make 
the slightest impression on his horse-will. The 
obstinacy remained and would appear the next 
day as surely as the rising sun. 

The most useful animal I ever rode was a white- 
eyed pinto pony that had gone blind in one eye 
and lame in one foot. All the other horses 
[33] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

seemed to despise him, kicked and bit at him, 
drove him off. He seemed never very anxious 
about the horse-bunch, and I took him away with 
me often on hunting trips. There were a great 
many pin-tailed or sharp-tailed grouse in Mon- 
tana in those days, and during the heat of the 
noon hours these grouse used to seek cover in low 
bullberry-bushes growing in the shallow swales. 
I rode the pinto through these bushes, seeing over 
the tops of them from his back. When the birds 
got up, the white-eyed one accommodatingly 
swung his head around to the right and allowed 
me to shoot from the saddle. He did not like 
shooting over his head but had no objection to a 
broadside. I made many bags of these birds, and 
in camp the cowboys (usually fed on beef three 
times a day) were enthusiastic over the new ration. 
In consequence the pinto came in for much praise 
and decent treatment in the corrals. 

But the pinto could not stand heavy work. 
Up in the mountains among the pinyons and 
pines, hunting elk or trying to locate mountain- 
lions, a stronger, swifter horse was needed. For 
that work I picked out a buckskin that was a 
good jumper and a swift runner. He had the 
usual horse failings, but he was superb in his sure- 
[34] 



RIDING THE OPEN 

footedness and in his ability to get in or out of 
the great steep-banked trenches that criss-crossed 
the Montana ranges. I began by training him 
to jump white-tailed deer in the willow bottoms 
of the Little Powder River. He would smash 
through the brush and make so much noise that 
any disposition on the part of the deer to skulk 
and hide in thickets (and that is one of their 
shrewdest plays) was discouraged at the start. 
They took to flight, and immediately the buck- 
skin saw them he went after them as though they 
were yearlings on the range that required rounding 
up. The deer, of course, would soon leave us in 
the rear, though I did manage to knock one of 
them over one day with a forty-four revolver. 
That, however, was an accident. In those days 
I often hunted game on horseback, without a gun, 
for the mere pleasure of seeing it run. A deer 
hurdling over fallen tree-trunks and taking a 
flying plunge into a river was a sight worth any 
one*s seeing. And what could be more thrilling 
than a band of elk breaking through pinyons on a 
full run ! Even a mountain-lion up a tree was 
better to look at than to shoot. 

There were other sights besides game to wonder 
over in that Montana country. One day, riding 
[35] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

through the willow bottoms of the Tongue, I got 
off my horse to examine something white that 
was half-bedded in the sand and grass. It was a 
human skull with a bullet-hole through the side 
of the head above the right ear. The eyes were 
stopped with dirt and the skull was bleached and 
dry. Had I been an evolutionist hunting for a 
missing link, perhaps I could have put together 
figures about river deposits, denuded benches, 
and glacial drifts, to prove the skull as old as 
the Neanderthal or Piltdown skull of prehistoric 
antiquity; but the bullet-hole gave me pause. 
The probabilities were overwhelming that it was 
an Indian or white man's skull and had been 
there only a few years. Riding on I found, a 
hundred yards farther up the river, the miss- 
ing link of the story. It was the remains of a 
half-burned wagon with collapsed wheels, rusted 
tires, and a broken tongue. Near by was a 
shovel, some barrel-staves, several broken boxes, 
bottles, and cans. Under a tree I put together 
about half of a human skeleton. What expla- 
nation ? Why, the obvious one that a miner's 
outfit going across the country had been sur- 
prised in camp. The Indians had killed the 
party, stolen the horses with everything of any 
[36] 



RIDING THE OPEN 

value in the camp, and the coyotes had done 
the rest. 

In Montana in the early eighties bones were 
scattered everywhere over the ranges, but they 
were not human bones. They were those of the 
buffaloes. Their slaughter had taken place a few 
years before. Outfits by the score had gone out 
from Miles City and elsewhere with shooters, 
skinners, drivers, and cooks. The buffaloes were 
shot by the thousands, their hides pulled off, and 
their carcasses allowed to lie where they fell. The 
hides were taken into the border towns, such as 
Miles City, and sold in the raw state for two dol- 
lars a hide, the money being immediately con- 
verted into raw whiskey. It was the most brutal 
butchery of big game the country had ever known. 
For years afterward the great buffalo range was 
strewn with the whitened bones; and then second 
expeditions, having learned that horns and bones 
were valuable, went out and gathered up the re- 
mains. Thus passed the buffalo. 

Riding in the Bad Lands in those days I was 
dimly aware of still other bones, that had not to 
do with buffaloes or Indians, but belonged to 
geological times. Unfortunately my interest was 
not great, and for that reason perhaps some im- 
[37] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

portant "finds" slipped through my fingers. My 
geologic curiosity at that time seemed to centre 
about the stratification of colored rocks rather 
than dinosaurs; and a sea-shell on top of a butte 
gave me more thrill than the joint of a mastodon. 
I remember gathering one day from the top of a 
small table-mountain a hatful of petrified clams 
— something I was told afterward, as regards the 
petrifaction, was an impossibility. The clam- 
shell was said to be simply filled with dirt and 
looked like a clam. But I broke open a dozen of 
those clams and found the same clam-colored in- 
terior in all of them. A casual glance would per- 
suade one that the clam was there and alive, but 
the touch of the finger found the flesh hard as 
jade. 

The colored strata and the strange forms of 
the eroded buttes in the Bad Lands were quite 
the most obvious features of the landscape. The 
cowboys could never be persuaded that water 
wear was responsible for the fantastic forms, and 
oxides of iron and copper for the bright colorings. 
They insisted on fire, volcano, or earthquake — 
some huge cataclysm — as necessary to such an 
effect. They pointed out as proof small jets of 
steam and Uttlc spirals of smoke coming out from 
[38] 



RIDING THE OPEN 

under some of the buttes or around the edge of 
sunken bowls in the ground. These bowls at 
times would be filled with bright-green grass while 
all the herbage about them would be withered and 
yellowed. My own imperfect ideas of geology 
led me to think them only manifestations of minor 
faul tings such as marked the Yellowstone Park 
with hot-water geysers, colored pools, and mud 
volcanoes. 

Southern and eastern Montana was a wonder- 
ful riding country just after the buffalo days. 
There were strange surprises at every turn and 
an infinite variety of prairie, plain, table-land, and 
mountain. From the high points one could see 
enormous distances through the clear air. I often 
saw the glow of sunlight on the Big Horn Moun- 
tains more than a hundred miles down in Wy- 
oming. And the endless vistas to the east over 
blossoming plains to be seen from the heights of 
the Cheetah Mountains or the foot-hills of the 
Rockies ! And what strange indented river- 
basins ! From the Indian trail looking down was 
there ever a stranger sight than the valley of the 
Big Horn River ? Beyond it there rose a loosely 
cemented table-land, gulched by rains and rivers 
until thousands of enormous cone-shaped peaks 
[39] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

seemed pitched upon the plain like the tents of 
some army of giants. 

A fascinating country was Montana in those 
days ! It was so aloof, so far away, and so su- 
perbly sublime in its vast sweep! Many times 
at dawn and dusk I rode the high ridges to see 
the sun come and go over that wilderness of the 
open. Even my horse, whose intelligence I 
scorned, would look out from some height with 
bulging eyes and forward-set ears as though he 
half comprehended the far distances if not the 
serene grandeur of the scene. Later on I rode 
for several years the Southwest and old Mexico, 
but they were not such riding country as Mon- 
tana. 



[40] 



CHAPTER III 
RIDING THE RANGES 

It was in the early eighties that the big herds 
of cattle were first driven up on the northern 
ranges. The buffaloes had not entirely passed 
but were rapidly passing. And the cattlemen were 
not sorry. It gave them new grazing country. 
The northern ranges were enormous, and by the 
casual observer were supposed to be quite worth- 
less. Gumbo, alkali, and sage-brush were almost 
everywhere, and anything like "feed" in the 
Eastern sense of tall grass was not apparent. But 
the cattlemen knew that the buffalo-grass, lying 
low and growing in small bunches, held more nu- 
trition than the long prairie-grass of the Dakotas. 
It had kept the buffaloes for many years. Why 
not the Texas long-horn or the Oregon short-horn ? 
And it did. 

The ranges in those days were held by claim 
and possession, very much as a miner staked out 
his diggings and held them — that is, with a gun. 
Some of the larger companies bought, or took out 
under the Homestead Act, a hundred or more 

[41] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

acres near water, and would call those acres 
the "home ranch*'; but the "home" was only a 
log hut where flour and other supplies were stored, 
and the "ranch" was merely an enlarged corral 
where a few horses for immediate need were pas- 
tured. Everybody slept on the ground and ate 
around a camp-fire or at the end of a grub-wagon. 
Once or twice a week perhaps camp was shifted 
to some new spot. The men worked over the 
herds during the summer, and a herd meant often- 
times fifty or a hundred thousand head of cattle 
belonging to one company. Such a herd would 
be scattered over two hundred square miles, 
though the owner perhaps claimed only fifty 
square miles. There were no fences, and bound- 
aries were recognized by creek beds or mountain 
ranges. A Stock Growers' Association immedi- 
ately came into existence for mutual protection, 
and every owner agreed not only to look after his 
own cattle on his own range but every other 
owner's cattle found upon his territory. This 
recognition of property rights with its spirit of 
mutual helpfulness was necessary; otherwise the 
cattle would be like so many herring in the sea, 
running in schools to be sure, but with no limit 
to their wanderings. 

[42} 



RIDING THE RANGES 

Helpful as was the association there were, 
nevertheless, endless quarrels between the stock- 
men over range lines, wrongly branded calves, 
and stolen horses. Outfits saddled up more than 
once and went over to neighboring ranches "to 
settle about those calves," and sometimes there 
was shooting; but usually it ended in a great deal 
of talk. Those were shooting days, and much 
ammunition was expended with good intent to 
kill, but it was always rather astonishing to me 
that so few of the enemy were laid low. The 
cowboy wore a belt of cartridges, had a forty-four 
gun in a holster on his hip, and, of course, prided 
himself on being a dead shot. He would spin un- 
ending yarns about shooting the lights out in 
saloons, splitting billiard-balls on the tables, and 
breaking the glass insulators on the telegraph- 
poles; but when you asked him to kill a coyote 
or a prairie-dog, or a sage-hen on the ground before 
him, he failed to arrive. He was out of practice, 
or his gun was dirty, or he had some new car- 
tridges that fitted badly. The truth was that 
his gun kicked so viciously it would overshoot an 
elephant at ten paces, and the bullet was so 
jammed in going from the cylinder into the barrel 
that it shot wildly. A further truth was that the 
[43] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

cowboy knew nothing about shooting per se. He 
could shoot more and hit less than any man I 
ever met. 

Sometimes the sheriffs and deputy-sheriffs de- 
veloped considerable skill in gun-play, because 
they were kept in continual practice. It was the 
golden age of the cattle business, and it was also 
a prosperous period for the engaging horse-thief. 
Horses were continually being run off into the 
Black Hills region and sold south and east through 
a Deadwood "fence." It became an established 
business. In riding the ranges I often picked up 
the trail of banded horses, and on several occa- 
sions traced them to the heads of deep-cut trenches 
where the horses had been rounded up and cor- 
ralled during the day. Most of the work was 
done by night, and in the actual stealing some- 
times a "wrangler,'* watching the ranch horse- 
bunch, would get a bullet through his head. 

All this was decidedly irritating to the cattle- 
men. They were too busy to chase horse-thieves, 
but they cursed loud and deep. At last, one 
summer the hat was passed around among the 
stock growers. Large sums were raised, men were 
hired at exalted prices, and an organized cam- 
paign was started. I was told (quite in confidence) 
[44] 



RIDING THE RANGES 

that the bag that season was fifty-two horse- 
thieves, shot on sight, and left just where they 
were shot. The result was that for several years 
thereafter the export trade in stolen horses through 
the Black Hills rather languished. 

Besides the horse-thieves in those early days 
there were Indians to bother the cattlemen. 
Every few weeks some wild-eyed cowboy from a 
neighboring ranch would come riding into camp 
to tell us with quick breath that the Indians were 
on the war-path. They were raiding the ranches, 
killing cattle, coming down the river, or doing 
something else equally perilous for us. But no 
one paid any attention to the warning. We went 
on eating beans, with boot-leg coffee for a wash- 
down, and crept into our blankets without assign- 
ing sentinels to keep guard. We had been fright- 
ed by those false fires too often. 

It is true there were depredations carried on by 
Indian bands moving across the ranges. They 
shot cattle when they wanted meat. Had not 
the white man shot their buffalo and why should 
they not shoot his beef? The carcass of a big 
steer with his tongue and tenderloin cut out, and 
the rest of him left to the buzzards, was not an 
infrequent find. And the knife-work always be- 
[45] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

trayed the Indian. This was still greater irrita- 
tion for the ranchmen, and occasionally a volun- 
teer posse of cowboys would go out from some 
cow-camp with the avowed purpose of ''getting 
those Indians," but the Indian had been raised 
in that country, and knew very well how to effect 
a disappearance. And the cowboy was always 
at a disadvantage. A half-Oregon horse carrying 
a heavy saddle and an armed and outfitted rider 
could not keep up with an Indian riding bare- 
back in his bare skin. 

Aside from horse-thieves and Indians, life on 
the big ranges was always adventurous, strenu- 
ous, more or less exciting. It was the beginning 
of the cattle business at the north when every- 
body rode hard with a whoop — rode the legs off 
the horses and the beef off the cattle. Every 
ranch with fifteen or twenty cowboys in the out- 
fit would have from a hundred to two hundred 
horses in the horse-bunch, and every cowboy 
would have from five to fifteen horses on his 
"string." In round-up work three or four horses 
a day of each cowboy's string would be ridden 
to a finish, thrown out to rest for four or five days, 
and then taken up again in rotation. It was a 
common occurrence to saddle up a horse and ride 
[46] 



RIDING THE RANGES 

him on a run for fifteen or twenty miles as the 
exigencies of the round-up demanded. That the 
horse blew or wheezed or got in a lather or stum- 
bled was no reason for moderating the pace. If 
the ride used him up permanently it was no great 
matter. There were plenty of other horses in 
the bunch. 

The quirt and spur and lasso were always in 
use. None of the horses understood any other 
language. They were started with a spur, stopped 
by a pull on the spade bit, turned to left or right 
by the flat of the rein on the neck. You could 
mount on the right side but not on the left, and 
you could ride with your hands up (one holding 
the reins and the other your lasso) but not with 
them down at your side or on the pommel. The 
horses were accustomed to that procedure and 
were nervous under any other. 

The saddle was a heavy, deep-seated afl^air, 
with broad double cinches that would hold any- 
thing from a calf to a silver- tip bear, and it was 
cinched up until the horse groaned. It required 
that tight cinching, for the strains on it at times 
were severe. When a heavy steer was roped, one 
sometimes felt as though something had to give 
way. Frequently the rider gave way, even when 
[47] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

there was no rope or steer attached. Though 
deep-seated in the saddle, with feet pushed through 
the stirrup to the instep, and straps to hold by 
in addition, one was often flung out of the saddle 
by the quick turn at full speed of a cutting horse. 
Every one sooner or later became an expert rider, 
but even expertism did not always save when a 
horse stumbled, or got his foot in a prairie-dog 
hole and cut a somersault, or ran over a calf on 
the edge of a herd and went down with a smash. 
It was hard work, made unnecessarily hard by 
whoop and bravado and a wrong understanding 
of the cattle business. 

A round-up at that time usually had several 
objects in view. Each outfit worked over its ter- 
ritory two or three times during the season to 
keep its cattle on its own range, to head cattle 
belonging to other ranches toward their home 
range, to brand newly-born calves, and to gather 
beef steers for market. In the cow-camp every- 
body got started before daylight. A coffee, 
beans, and beef breakfast was ready at the tail- 
end of the grub-wagon as soon as the men had 
their blankets rolled and their faces dry-wiped, or 
wet-dipped if water was at hand. By daylight 
the horse-bunch had been driven in, held up in an 
[48} 



RIDING THE RANGES 
i 

improvised rope corral, and the men were lassoing 
the animals that were to be ridden that morning. 

Saddling followed, and with much profanity. 
The tough, the bad man, the bronco-buster were 
in evidence in every outfit, and the horses were 
told, with strange oaths, to stand still or they 
would be cut in two. Naturally they curved their 
backs, laid their ears flat down, and looked the 
more devilish the tighter the cinches were drawn. 
The men swung into the saddles, but the moment 
the horses were urged forward by the spur, per- 
haps a third of them began to buck. Ten minutes 
of that and then the bronco-busters — often whey- 
faced and out of breath from their pounding — 
caught up with the rest of the band. Never 
caring much for the joy or glory of conquering a 
bucking horse, I compromised by a looser cinch, 
and if, in spite of that, the animal looked vicious, 
I walked him for a few minutes before mounting. 
The result was I usually maintained a spinal 
column untelescoped, and rode my miles as easily 
as the others. 

The controlling instinct of range cattle has 

always been to keep together — to keep in a bunch 

or herd. In riding the ranges one occasionally 

saw two lone bulls that had been fighting for sev- 

[49} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

eral days and had just enough strength left to 
stand and glare at each other, or a disabled cow 
with a young calf, or a bawling yearling that had 
lost the herd; but usually the cattle were seen in 
bunches of from ten to a hundred scattered at 
random over small areas. These groups were 
found grazing in the little valleys and swales 
lying off from the main creeks. Once a day, 
sometimes once in two or three days, the units 
would come lowing to water at the creeks, and 
then afterward trail up the swales and out on the 
ranges for ten or fifteen miles. On a round-up 
these groups were brought together in a large 
central group by the simple process of riding the 
swales and driving the cattle toward a given point 
on the creek or river bottom. They could always 
be relied upon, whether grazing at ease or wildly 
stampeding down a swale, to hold together. In 
fact, at the round-up difficulties never arose until 
the cutting horses began separating certain cows 
and calves from the main herd. Any attempt to 
separate an animal from his kind met with instant 
opposition from the animal. 

The first round-up of the day began by riding 
down the spread sticks of a fan toward the handle. 
The foreman portioned out half of his force of 
[50] 



RIDING THE RANGES 

men to a lieutenant and sent him to the left, 
going himself to the right with the remaining 
eight or ten men. Each foreman, after riding 
for a mile or more, would perhaps strike the head 
of a swale leading down to the main creek. Here 
he would drop off a man and tell him to ride down 
that stick and drive all the cattle in the swale to 
the creek bottom (the handle of the fan), perhaps 
ten or twelve miles away. Going on another mile 
or two or three this detailing of a man would be 
repeated. Another cowboy would be set to drive 
down a swale. And so on until there were twenty 
men driving swales from different directions, and 
all of them hustling cattle toward the fan-handle 
or the main round-up goal on the creek bed. 

When first surprised in the swales the cattle 
were always very wild. They curled their tails 
over their backs and ran like deer. They would 
sometimes run for several miles before a horse- 
man could come up within fifty yards of them. 
As the bunch accumulated numbers on its way 
down the swale it became a little heavier and 
slower, got churned up somewhat with running, 
and lost some of its fear of the horseman. When 
finally it debouched into the creek bed and met 
other bunches coming down the far sticks from dif- 
[51] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

ferent directions, it melted into one promiscuous 
herd that milled around and looked wild-eyed in 
the most approved picture-fashion. The bring- 
ing together of the big bulls resulted at once in 
many fights, all of them easily staged and quickly 
carried out; the calves occasionally losing their 
mothers meant frantic bawling and running 
about; the whole bunch twining and intertwining 
and pawing the ground threw up clouds of alkali- 
dust. But the herd held together. By the time 
all the swale riders had driven in their catch per- 
haps there were five thousand cattle or more on a 
level piece of ground, kept in ring-form by cow- 
boys riding slowly backward and forward. 

Then another phase of the round-up began. 
The horse-bunch and the grub-wagon, taking a 
direct line, usually arrived in advance of the cattle. 
Fresh horses were roped and the specially trained 
cutting horses were brought up. They edged into 
the herd, guided by their riders, and began get- 
ting out the cows running with unbranded calves. 
After one or two turnings by the flat of the rein 
an intelligent cutting horse would know precisely 
the cow wanted. He would get up to her flank 
and gradually work her toward the edge of the 
herd — the cow looking behind and always push- 
[32] 



RIDING THE RANGES 

ing ahead to get away from the horse. When the 
outer edge was reached, a slight touch of the spur, 
a dash forward of the horse, and both cow and 
calf would suddenly find themselves twenty yards 
outside the herd. 

That was the beginning of trouble, for instantly 
the cow found herself isolated from the herd she 
would try to plunge back into it. Then came into 
play the swiftness, quickness, and skill of the cut- 
ting horse. His nose was always at the cow*s 
shoulder heading her off. There would be a wild 
dash at antelope speed for a quarter of a mile 
around the edge of the herd, but the horse would 
be on the inside. Then, without the slightest in- 
timation, as quick as a flash, the cow and calf 
would turn about and run back over the course. 
Only one thing could go beyond the quickness 
of the cow and calf and that was the quickness 
of the horse. If you were on his back, you found 
out instantly why the cowboys rode in a deep 
saddle, w^ith a long stirrup, and their foot pushed 
through the stirrup to the instep. Even with 
those aids you would often have difficulty in keep- 
ing your seat when the horse turned to follow the 
cow. The wrench of it was wicked — so much so 
that in those days a cowboy over thirty, riding a 
[33] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

cutting horse, was a rare sight. Only the young 
men could stand the strain. 

After two or three turns up and down the out- 
side line the cow would find herself gradually 
pushed farther away from the herd. Temporarily 
she would give up her herd proclivities and stand 
out in the open bawling her loneliness, while an 
extra cowboy kept her in check. After several 
cows and calves were thus run out they would 
form a little herd of their own, and with each 
other's company for solace they would gradually 
quiet down. On the opposite side of the big 
herd a bunch of beef cattle to be shipped to mar- 
ket would begin forming in precisely the same 
way. This beef herd would grow in numbers 
with each round-up, be kept in charge by a special 
man or two, and moved slowly from place to 
place. Eventually it would be grazed along at 
the rate of ten miles a day (so it would not 
lose weight) toward a railroad siding with cattle 
chutes and cars for shipment. Perhaps at the 
end of a month or more this beef herd, seven or 
eight hundred strong, would reach its goal in the 
Chicago stock-yards. 

After the beef cattle and the unbranded calves 
were taken out the balance of the herd was headed 
[54] 



RIDING THE RANGES 

back over the ground that had been worked, and 
perhaps the stranger cattle in the herd started 
north or south, east or west, in the direction of 
their home ranches. Then came the branding of 
the calves. Each one in turn was roped around 
the neck from a horse and towed by the horse, 
bawling, kicking, and pulling, up to the branding 
fire. There it was flung down on its side and 
duly branded with the 70L or Diamond Bar, or 
Double Circle of its mother. 

Everything unbranded received similar treat- 
ment, whether a day or a year old. The moment 
the hot iron struck the flank a bawl was emitted, 
and every cowboy knew by the pitch of that bawl 
just the age of the victim. The young ones 
struck a baby treble and the larger ones a six- 
months-old bass. In addition to the branding 
perhaps there was wattling on the throat or 
swallow-wing cuts in the ear. Everything was 
swiftly done, with no antiseptics of any kind. The 
calf, when finally allowed to scramble to its feet, 
was given a kick in the belly and sent to find its 
mother as best it could. Hardly one of them but 
weathered through this rather violent treatment. 
In that new country and that pure air it seemed 
impossible for bacteria to make trouble. Men 
{55^ 



THE OPEN SPACES 

and animals died from accident but not from 
disease. 

Occasionally accident would kill off a cow and 
leave a calf motherless. But after a few days of 
bawling the newly made orphan would hunt up 
a partner in misfortune and the two would sneak 
around in company stealing milk from the other 
cows. They quickly learned to eat buffalo-grass, 
and the premature grass diet usually made them 
pot-bellied, woolly in their coats, and nigger- 
looking in their eyes. If winter came in early 
they had but a poor chance of going through to 
spring, because not strong enough or hardy 
enough to paw through the snow to the dry range 
grass beneath. In severe sleet storms lumps 
of frozen snow would lodge on their backs and 
stay there for weeks, depressing their vitality, 
and eventually, with poor feed and much exposure, 
resulting in their death. They were forlorn speci- 
mens, and even when they weathered through and 
grew up they were always the runts of the herd. 
Yet this motherless calf was the cause of more 
than half the quarrels between the different 
ranches. This was the so-called "maverick" — no 
one's property because without a holding mother, 
and hence to be branded and claimed by the 
[56^ 



RIDING THE RANGES 

first comer. The quarrels grew out of second 
comers, who changed the initial brands to their 
own, and were thus open to the charge of "steal- 
ing calves." 

After the noon meal, the grub-wagon, the horse- 
bunch, and the beef herd would start on a straight 
line for a camping spot, and the men with fresh 
horses would start an afternoon round-up pre- 
cisely as in the morning. In this way the whole 
range would be gradually worked over by the 
creek beds, the calves branded, the beef cattle 
selected, and the increase or decrease of the gen- 
eral herd estimated. Incidentally the cattle got 
much shaken up and lost flesh, while the horses 
were galled or wounded or strained in the legs. 
The riding was of the hardest. A cowboy riding 
to a finish four horses a day would frequently go 
eighty or a hundred miles, and that at a hard 
gallop, over the roughest ground, up hill and 
down dale, smashing through willows or buUberry- 
bushes, galloping over rocks or streams or quick- 
sands. It was a losing business, because on a 
scale too large to control and too ruinous in waste 
to be kept up. 

After a few years the losses through bad man- 
agement, gray wolves, cattle-thieves, and hard 
[57] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

winters were so great that the big herds began 
to contract. Eventually the settler and the wire 
fence came on the scene, and that was the be- 
ginning of the end. The brave old days of whoop 
and shout passed out, and to-day the trail of the 
cowboy at the north has grown dim. There are 
ranches still existent and cowboys who run the 
legs off of horses, but the ranches are small and 
the outfits are pale imitations of those that flour- 
ished and fought in the early eighties. 



[58] 



CHAPTER IV 
THE COWBOY 

In the order of their importance, and in the 
estimate of the cattlemen, the cattle came first, 
the horses next, and the men last of all. If any- 
thing was to be rescued it was the imperilled herd, 
not the men. The cow-punchers could look after 
themselves, hustle their own horses, rustle their 
own beds and food, and get out of trouble as they 
got into it. In Montana, in the eighties, they 
were all young, active, and capable, needing 
neither sympathy nor help. And, naturally, 
astride of a horse, wearing "chaps" and carrying 
a gun at the hip, they took themselves rather 
seriously. They even accepted the popular esti- 
mate of themselves that they were a distinct 
genus of their own, and a bold bad lot into the 
bargain. 

I never had many delusions about the cowboy, 
for I knew his kind before he was born. He never 
belonged to the Mexican vaquero class in the sense 
of being raised with cattle and riding with horses 
all his life. The vaquero was a peon herdsman, 
[59] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

born and trained on an hacienda^ and remained 
such to the end of his days; but the northern cow- 
boy was merely a Wandering Willie, who rode the 
ranges for a time because it was an easy job. He 
was usually a ne'er-do-well. Born perhaps in 
the Mississippi Valley region, and rejected by his 
family for moral delinquencies, he drifted out on 
the border and became a ranch hand because help 
was scarce and anybody could ride a horse, drive 
a cow, and tote a gun. He rode for only a few 
years and then, getting stiff in the joints from 
many strains, he took up with some kind of trade, 
opened a livery-stable or a saloon, started pros- 
pecting, gambling, tramping, or some other hon- 
orable or dishonorable calling. Cowboying was 
to him only a youthful and a temporary step-gap. 
The raftsman of the Mississippi had typified his 
kind a dozen years before him. They were both 
of the unsettled youthful class and took up with 
riding a raft or riding a horse because the work 
had excitement in it and not too much continuous 
exertion. 

The mentality and morality of both classes 

were rather conspicuously absent. They had 

little or no education, no great intelligence, and 

the very slightest sense of responsibility. The 

[60] 



THE COWBOY 

vices of the border town — drinking, gambling, 
women — were naturally uppermost with the cow- 
boy. Occasionally I would meet one who could 
speak the truth without swearing, and almost all 
of them recognized property rights and abstained 
from stealing; but they were quick on the trigger, 
shot to kill, with no compunctions of conscience 
if they happened to succeed, and got out of the 
country on a stolen horse if it were necessary. 

They partly atoned for these reckless propensi- 
ties by an unbounded good nature and generosity. 
The morose and disagreeable personality was sel- 
dom met with. They all talked a great deal, as 
young people usually do, and their theme was 
naturally limited, especially on the range. In a 
cow-camp every one talked cow or held his 
tongue. The tenderfoot from the East who 
started in to discourse about the theatres or res- 
taurants or society life in Chicago or New York 
soon found himself without an audience. They 
knew nothing about things east of the Mississippi, 
and they did not care to know anything about 
them. They talked their shop and wanted you 
to do the same. 

Of course they were generous — that (rather 
than patriotism, as Doctor Johnson had it) being 
[61} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

the last refuge of a scoundrel. Almost all crooked 
people are generous, and everybody, straight or 
crooked, in a new country where people are scarce, 
helps his neighbor. Those who live in crowded 
cities, and struggle to keep their ribs free from 
their neighbor's elbows, have very little under- 
standing of the right and decent feeling among 
people who live in the open. Helpfulness with 
them is not so much regarded as a virtue as self- 
ishness a crime. The cowboy, as a class, was 
never selfish. I had one summer for a partner 
a boy who had killed two men, been a gambler, 
served a term for stealing, and had a decidedly 
bad record; but I never knew a more sunny na- 
ture or a more generous one. When we rolled 
out our blankets on the ground at night, if there 
was one side softer or better than the other I got 
it; when he reached for the coffee-pot he helped 
me first; when we saddled up he would rope and 
bring out my horse or swing my saddle. And 
with all his bad history he was tremendously 
courageous and had as much endurance as any 
man I ever knew. 

This same cowboy, while riding with me on a 
round-up and trying to cut a cow and calf out of 
a herd, had the misfortune to be badly thrown. 
[62] 



THE COWBOY 

The calf ran across and in front of his horse while 
going at full speed, and the result was that both 
horse and rider turned a complete somersault. 
The cantle of the saddle caught his right leg, 
making a square break of the ankle. That was 
bad business, for we were eighty-four miles from 
Miles City — the nearest place for medical help — 
and no way to get there except on horseback. I 
was the only one in the outfit who had ever seen 
a broken leg. I got the cowboy — we will call 
him Dave — down to the creek, stretched him out, 
pulled off his boot, found the break, and by much 
pulling and more awkward feeling got the broken 
sections into place. I had brought from the grub- 
wagon a cracker-box, which I split up into many 
thin splints, and also several flannel shirts that I 
tore into strip bandages. I made a plumber's 
joint over the ankle, winding it until it was nearly 
a foot in diameter and reached from the instep 
to the knee. The whole was lashed fast and 
tight with much heavy cord and rawhide. During 
this crude performance Dave never flinched or 
groaned, though the sweat was rolling down his 
face; but when it was finished he swore with much 
violence and thanked me between oaths. 
The real difficulty now came. It was the height 
[63] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

of the season and even I was riding down and out 
three and four horses a day. Dave had to ride 
alone to Miles City because no one could be 
spared from the round-up to go with him. I put 
some cold provender in a small gunny-sack, caught 
up an extra lead horse, got him into the saddle, 
and started him across the Big Powder to Miles 
City. He got there, as I afterward learned, with- 
out accident, but it must have been a difficult 
journey. It meant that he had to get in and 
out of the saddle, picket and water his horses, 
gather his wood, make his fire, cook his food, 
stretch his blankets, and all with a broken leg. 
He was four days and nights on the way, meeting 
not a soul, and sleeping with one eye open for 
fear he might lose his horses and be left afoot and 
crippled. That, I submit, called for courage and 
endurance. Few people would fancy the trip 
alone even unhandicapped by accident. Dave 
pulled through by sheer grit. When he got to 
town and had his leg examined, he was told that it 
needed no resetting. That was sheer good luck. 
He was back on the ranch in less than six months, 
quite as good as new. 

Accidents on the range were not infrequent. 
The riding was of the roughest, and the cowboys 
[64] 



THE COWBOY 

were often thrown, or were twisted in a taut rope, 
or squeezed under a falling horse. Sometimes 
the cattle got ** ornery" — as the boys said — and 
charged everything in sight. Travelling the range 
on foot was always dangerous. The cattle were 
somewhat accustomed to a man on a horse, but 
they would quickly run down and toss a man 
afoot. Often, after being roped and thrown, 
some of the wilder cattle would get to their feet 
half-frenzied and rush at anything moving. 
One day in crossing a small stream, called Crow 
Creek, we found two very heavy steers bogged 
down in alkali mud until only their heads and 
tails were visible. We threw ropes over the 
horns of the first one and then, with a turn 
of the ropes around the pommels of our saddles, 
five of us abreast started our horses up the 
bank. 

The ropes stretched like fiddle-strings, and it 
was a question in my mind which would break 
first, the ropes or the horns. But rather unex- 
pectedly the body of the steer slipped forward 
out of the mud. We dragged him out on the 
bank and immediately heeled him with another 
rope. I was then delegated by the foreman to 
get down and slip the ropes off the horns while 
[65] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

the heel-rope was held taut. I did so, and then 
scrambled on my horse as quickly as possible, 
well knowing a charge would follow. Sure enough, 
as soon as the steer got to his feet and kicked 
loose his heel-rope he came at me under full speed. 
I led him away on a chase for three-quarters of a 
mile and then rode back to help rescue his com- 
panion. The same performance was repeated. It 
seemed a highly ungrateful proceeding on the part 
of the steers, but they, of course, were merely re- 
senting the immediate injury to their dignity or 
their horns. 

Cattle have as little sense as horses, and when 
anything unusual happens they are easily stam- 
peded. One night when encamped under some 
cottonwoods on the Big Powder we were surprised 
by heavy rain and terrific lightning. My partner 
and myself, knees up, were endeavoring to shed 
the rain from our tarpaulin, when I heard, along 
the ground, a beating, rumbling sound that had 
nothing to do with the storm. I put my head 
out of the blankets to locate the sound just as a 
flash of lightning made a vivid illumination. In 
that momentary light I saw the tossing heads and 
horns of cattle on a wide front moving down upon 
the camp. I knew instantly that it was the beef 
[66] 



THE COWBOY 

herd that had been stampeded by the lightning 
and was running wild. 

A yell to the camp brought every one to his 
feet, and there was a quick rush to get behind 
cottonwood-trees. Six or seven hundred wild- 
eyed and frenzied cattle, not knowing where they 
were going, dashed through the camp. As they 
passed the tree behind which I stood each one, as 
he saw me out of the corner of his eye, snorted 
and kicked at me viciously. That swaying body 
of mad cattle, their wet hides, large eyes, and 
tossing heads, illumined by flashes of lightning, 
was about the weirdest, wildest sight I have ever 
seen. They ran on and down to the cut bank 
of the Big Powder River. There the first ones 
paused on the edge of a ten-foot drop, but the 
ones behind forced the leaders over the edge, 
and presently they were all leaping and smashing 
into the stream and swimming for the other side. 
I ran down after them and saw the second wild- 
est scene of my life — mad cattle swimming a 
swollen river at night, with flashes of lightning 
and peals of thunder for accompaniment. That 
herd ran for ten miles before it paused. How 
much flesh the cattle lost on the run I do not 
know. I know the camp lost some sleep and 
[67] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

counted itself lucky that no one had lost his 
life. 

The lightning in that Montana country I have 
never seen equalled elsewhere for deadliness of 
effect. It was not at all unusual to find cattle and 
horses killed by it; and the cowboys who had 
special charge of the beef herd insisted that, at 
night during storms, they could see the lightning 
playing about the horns of the cattle. One of our 
boys, while washing some clothes at the river's 
edge, was struck dead by a bolt that came almost 
out of the blue, so small was the cloud that sent 
it forth. At another time Rvq of us were riding 
abreast along a high ridge, behind two or three 
hundred cattle that we were driving down to a 
round-up, when a thunder-storm overtook us. 
Two clouds seemed to converge and merge as they 
came over us. There was not one among us who 
did not know we were in the most dangerous 
place imaginable. Riding behind heated cattle 
was thought to be perilous, and the high ridge 
made us an exceptionally good target. Not one 
of us, had he been alone, but would have sought 
lower ground and let the cattle go; but each was 
ashamed to suggest such a thing, thinking there 
would be a sneer, a laugh, or a taunt about "some- 
[68] 



THE COWBOY 

body being scared." We rode on at a hard gallop 
and swore as the cold rain filled our boots with 
water. 

Suddenly there came a terrific crash. My riding 
hands dropped to my sides as though paralyzed, 
my head seemed to contract Into my coat collar, 
and a tingling sensation ran through my body. 
My companion for that day (riding at my side 
and only an arm's length away) I saw, out of the 
corner of my eye, throw his hands up in the air 
like a man shot through the heart, and fall 
over backward, while his horse wildly reared and 
plunged forward. For a few seconds there was 
a mix-up of men and horses on the ground, and 
then everybody came back to normal, except my 
companion. He was sitting up in the grass 
wildly feeling around for his gun and howling 
that he had lost it and could not shoot. The 
lightning had so shocked him that he was out of 
his head for a day or more. His horse had a 
hind leg drawn up under his belly and stood on 
three legs for several hours. My cowboy hat had 
the brim torn out as though with a nail, and my 
right spur was melted off. The foreman of the 
outfit, who happened to be looking at us from a 
hilltop half a mile away, averred that the light- 
[69} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

ning had spattered among our horses' hoofs and 
that the number of us had absorbed the shock or 
else some one would have been killed. Perhaps. 

Just before that crash of lightning there had 
been much laughter and profanity to show we 
were not afraid. But after the crash not a word 
was said. A great silence fell upon us. We 
gathered up my riding mate and got back to camp. 
He was put in blankets and an old coat thrown 
over his head (as a dog in a fit is treated), and 
every one went about his business as usual. 
That evening at supper one of the hardest of the 
swearers sat across the camp-fire from me. He 
was balancing a tin cup of coffee in his hand, and 
as he caught my eye he winked at me slyly, shook 
his head a little, and smilingly remarked in a low 
tone: 

"I tell you the Old Man came near ketchin* 
us that time." 

His reference to the Deity as the Old Man was 
quite in keeping with the prevailing custom of 
the camp. 

The courage of the cowboy was perhaps not 

greater or less than that of other people. Every 

sensible person knows the meaning of fear, though 

some are able to hide their outward expression 

[70] 



THE COWBOY 

better than others. And one gets used to danger 
without particularly enjoying it. Soldiers on the 
firing-line finally become seasoned in being shot 
at, and do not flinch, just as, in a smaller way, 
the people crossing a street are accustomed to 
dodging automobiles without heart-failure. So 
with the cowboy. After familiarity with many 
strange accidents, there came a time when he no 
longer ducked at the report of a pistol or a clap 
of thunder. Moreover, he was so full of robust 
health that he thought nothing could kill him. 
His health was an asset he drew upon rather 
heavily. In town for a few days, he drank enough 
whiskey to kill an ordinary man with alcoholic 
poisoning, but he knew he was tough and could 
pull through. And he usually did. 

A boy from our outfit was sent into Miles City 
to bring out a bunch of young bulls, just arrived 
by train from Oregon. He did so, but knowing 
that the way was long and the job rather lonely^ 
he also brought with him for company a small 
keg of whiskey. The keg, the bulls, and the boy 
arrived in camp; but the keg was empty and the 
boy had a pain in his abdominal region. He 
came to me for comfort. On examination I found 
he had a mushroom protrusion over his appendix, 
[71} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

and I now know that he had a bad case of appen- 
dicitis, but the disease and the word were unknown 
at that time. I put him in his blankets under a 
big cottonwood-tree and then went to the grub- 
wagon in search of a possible remedy. I found a 
bottle of crude castor-oil that some one had used 
to doctor a horse with a bellyache. If it were 
good for a horse, why not also for a man — both 
having similar symptoms ? I gave the cowboy 
several heroic doses of that crude oil out of a 
rusty iron spoon. It was a God's mercy I did 
not kill him outright. 

The oil, with hot compresses (made by soaking 
a flannel shirt in hot water), proved effective, and 
in a few days the lowly cow-puncher was calling 
for something to eat. I could think of nothing 
as safe as milk, but with twenty thousand fresh 
cows on the range there was not a drop to drink. 
Not one of the twenty thousand had ever been 
milked or handled in any way. I went out with 
two boys, chased up a young-looking cow and, 
after a half-mile run, roped and threw her. We 
dragged her into camp, put her in the corral, put 
ropes on her hind legs so she could not kick, and 
tied her head up with another rope so she could 
not hook. Of course I, being the tenderfoot of 
[72] 



THE COWBOY 

the camp, was the only one out of eighteen whoop- 
ing worthies who knew how to milk. I got about 
a pint of milk and took it to the recuperating 
cow-puncher. He drank it eagerly and I went 
away to turn my horse into the corral. In ten 
minutes I came back to find on the ground near 
the sick one something that looked like oyster- 
crackers. I asked him where he got them. 

"Oyster-crackers ! They ain*t oyster-crackers. 
That's that damned milk!'* 

The milk had gone down his throat, turned 
into pot-cheese, and come up again in less than 
ten minutes. But the boy got well. He was too 
tough even for ignorance and malpractice to kill. 

Toughness, with bravado and some inherent 
recklessness, usually made of the cowboy a good 
rider. He was never minded to ride like the hunt 
riders of the East. From riding all day for weeks 
at a time he came to seek the line of least resis- 
tance. He sat low in the saddle, with a straight 
leg, and with hands, arms, and body swaying 
easily. Occasionally and exceptionally one would 
meet with a cowboy who was timid about his 
horse, perhaps fearful of a bucking contest, or a 
stumble or a bolt. Such a one never became a 
good rider and was always the butt of the camp. 
[73} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

There was no place for timidity in the outfit. It 
met with a sneer and a jeer. And no one had 
sufficient simplicity of soul to refuse a "dare." 
In consequence there was often reckless riding to 
prove nothing. Even Ben, the foreman of the 
70L, was not impervious to the ironic voice and 
the contemptuous look. 

Ben owned a large eight-year-old mare that had 
never been saddled or bridled. She ran with the 
horse-bunch, but when the bunch was driven into 
camp or corral the mare always cut through the 
line and escaped. No one could get within half 
a mile of her. She made great five-mile circles 
about the camp, drawn by the horses but fearful 
of the men. Ben was continually pestered by 
the boys as to when he was going to ride that 
mare. She was getting too old to break; in an- 
other year or so she would be hopeless; they 
guessed perhaps he was afraid to ride her. 

One Sunday morning when every one was hav- 
ing a wash-up and no one working, the question 
of the mare was again broached. Ben thought 
it was time to yield. Four swift horses were 
caught up and the mare, far outside of the horse- 
bunch and cutting her huge homing circles, was 
run in relays. After an hour she was roped, 
[74] 



THE COWBOY 

dragged into the corral, flung on the ground, 
bridled, and blindfolded by having an old shirt 
thrown over her head. On her feet again she 
responded to a saddle put on her by bucking 
vigorously but unavailingly. The saddle was 
double-cinched and the stirrups hoppled under her 
belly. Then, true to form, the gallant foreman 
swung swiftly into the saddle, pulled the shirt off 
the mare's head, drove his spurs into her ribs, 
and the two went through the corral gate as though 
shot out of a catapult. 

Then followed the cleanest, highest, and swift- 
est bucking I have ever witnessed. Ben went 
"above timber-line** with every buck, as the boys 
expressed it — the reference being to the oak in 
the high pommel of the saddle. Not being able to 
jounce him off, the mare started and ran despite 
the spade-bit cutting into her mouth. I had 
never before seen such reckless running through 
sage-brush, over tree-holes, and down cut banks 
and washouts. Two cowboys at full speed rode 
beside the mare and tried, with their horses for 
company, to quiet her; but she was not to be com- 
forted. After an hour or more the three came 
back to the corral, the mare in a lather and bloody 
in both mouth and sides, but with eyes still wild 
[75] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

and spirit far from tamed. Ben never tried to 
bridle or saddle her again. Sure enough, she was 
too old to be tamed and she eventually became 
a wild horse in the offing, something ghostlike 
vanishing over a hill or around a butte; but not 
to be caught again by any cowboy's lasso. 

In a few years the days of the great outfits at 
the north had passed away. The cattlemen found 
that rough ranching did not pay and, with cattle 
as with politics, everything eventually reduced it- 
self to a matter of finance. The big ranches were 
contracted, the big herds grew less, the rough 
riding went out, and cattle-growing was brought 
down to a business with fewer risks and more 
certainties. In that form it still exists through 
all the country lying to the west of the Mississippi. 
The old-time cow outfit of forty years ago has 
passed into tradition, though in 1920 I found a 
survival of the type down in the Mohave Desert 
near Hinckley. With several thousand cattle in 
a desert valley growing sacaton and bunch-grass, 
there was an old-fashioned outfit still sleeping on 
the ground, eating beef and beans, beating up its 
horses, and yelling itself sore in the throat at its 
cattle. Apparently nothing had been changed 
except the date in the calendar. The cowboy in 
[76] 



THE COWBOY 

"chaps/* spurs, gun, Stetson hat, and profanity- 
was rushing things as vigorously as in the hal- 
cyon days of the big ranges in Montana and 
Wyoming. 



[77] 



CHAPTER V 
DESERT DAYS 

The desert is quite a different country from the 
uplands of Montana and Wyoming. As its name 
implies, it is deserted. The cattle-grower in the 
spring of the year pastures near-by parts of it, 
the prospector worries along certain mountain 
ranges of it looking for outcroppings of metal- 
bearing rock, the borax man creeps in and out of 
Death Valley with mule-teams, and sometimes a 
venturesome tourist picks up and follows the old 
trails of the Yumas from the Colorado to the 
Pacific; but in spite of these mild advances the 
land still remains deserted. When I first knew 
the Colorado and Mohave Deserts, twenty-five 
years ago, they were much less travelled than now 
— so much less that at one time I wandered there 
for nearly six weeks, with a dog and horse, and 
in that time saw neither rag nor bone nor hank of 
hair of humanity. There was only the desert — 
a great open wilderness lying under a clear sky 
and a blazing sun. 

To venture into that wilderness without under- 
[78] 



DESERT DAYS 

standing its conditions was to invite disaster. 
Those who lived along its edges were full of strange 
tales about it — tales of its perils, of water-holes 
poisoned by copper and salt, of weird mirages and 
lost trails. And there were stories innumerable 
of dazed wanderings and deaths by heat and star- 
vation. No one cared to go very far from a 
home base even with the gold lure in mind, and 
as for riding the desert for the mere joy of ex- 
ploring it, that was the fancy of a madman. 
When I first began pushing into the interior from 
outlying stations there were plenty of old-timers 
to inform me that I was crazy and would "get 
caught up with.'* The reasons for their predic- 
tions were numerous. 

In the first place, I declined to dress in mining 
costume, with a flannel shirt, thick trousers, large 
felt hat, and hobnailed boots. I wore a half- 
Indian, half-Mexican costume, consisting of noth- 
ing but a thin cotton shirt and trousers, a straw 
hat, and moccasins on my feet. I discarded im- 
pedimenta for both myself and my horse and 
travelled as lightly as possible. All the pots and 
pans and flasks and opera-glasses that generally 
make weight in a camping-kit were left behind. 
I carried a rifle, a small shovel, a hatchet, a pair 
[79] 



' THE OPEN SPACES 

of light blankets, a small pan and some tin cups 
for cooking, a gallon of water, and several sacks 
of condensed food. I made my own condensation 
by grinding to a powder parched corn, beans, 
coffee, chocolate, and dried venison. This I 
packed closely in shot-sacks. Such was its sus- 
taining power that a small sack would last me for 
weeks. I had merely to pour a few tablespoonfuls 
of it into a cup, add water, stir with a stick, and 
drink. I could go for twelve hours on less than 
half a cupful of it. 

Besides this mixture I carried tablets of choco- 
late, closely packed dried figs, a few shelled al- 
monds, a little bacon, some flour, salt, tea, and 
a small bottle of saccharine. I had with me 
a long single-barrelled twenty-two caliber Chico- 
pee pistol, with which I shot rabbits, desert quail, 
doves, and other small game. My whole outfit 
weighed perhaps less than fifty pounds.* 

With living and transportation requirements 
thus reduced to a minimum, I felt measurably 

* I had always fancied my provisioning was very meagre — in fact, 
approached to Indian simplicity — until John Muir told me of his 
mountaineering in the Sierras with nothing but tea and bread in a 
small sack carried over his shoulder. He slept under any bush that 
offered shelter, without blankets, and usually without fire. But 
Muir was Scotch and tough as a bit of heather — with all the beauty 
of character and fine color-tone belonging to that shrub. 

[80] 



DESERT DAYS 

secure. My horse I always kept in fresh condi- 
tion by not overtiring him, so that in case of 
emergency I could ride out of the desert, or to the 
edge of it fifty miles or more, at one stretch. But, 
of course, the horse was a responsibility, a cause 
for worry at all times. The beast I first secured 
was desert-bred, accustomed to heat, and could 
go, under pressure, a day or more without drink- 
ing; but he required water every day to keep him 
in condition, and water was the scarcest article of 
all on the desert. I was never able to move from 
one water-hole until I had located and tested an- 
other. Some days I would ride twenty miles in 
one direction, and, finding no water, would be 
forced to return to my former water-hole. 

But after a few weeks I became rather cunning 
about finding water in unexpected places. On the 
California deserts I always followed the moun- 
tain ranges, working along the bases, and my eye 
came to recognize (by a slight variation in the 
hue of the ground or the shade of color in desert 
growths) just where water could be found by 
<^iggi^g« The mountains, some of them lifting 
six or eight thousand feet, received considerable 
rainfall on their tops during the rainy season of 
winter, but very little rain ever fell in the valleys 
[81] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

at any time. It would be evaporated by the hot 
air of the valleys before reaching the ground. The 
rain falling on the mountain tops would wash down 
in stream courses to the bases, and what got to 
the desert valleys disappeared at once under the 
sands. 

But some of the water remained in the upper 
stream-bed, even during the long, dry summer, and 
was hidden in pot-holes of the rock under accu- 
mulated layers of sand and gravel. Wherever a 
stream was shunted over a ledge of rock and fell 
from a distance into a basin below, I would gen- 
erally find, under the sand and gravel deposit of 
the basin, a catch of water. Digging for just a 
few feet would disclose it. These catches of water 
differed in size according to the basin. Sometimes 
there were only a few gallons and at other times 
several barrels. If there was no considerable 
body of sand and gravel the water would soon 
dry out and I had to look elsewhere; if the bottom 
of the basin was cracked the water leaked out 
and I dug in vain. Not one basin in a dozen 
answered expectations, but enough of them re- 
sponded to make life endurable for my small 
outfit. 

It was amusing at first to watch the eagerness 
[82] 



DESERT DAYS 

of both the dog and the horse when I began dig- 
ging with my small shovel in one of these rock- 
basins. They quickly grasped the fact that I was 
after water and would crowd forward with paw 
and hoof and push gravel into the hole until I 
had to send them off. I usually made the dog 
drive the horse away, but the horse came back 
in a few minutes, head down, ears set, eyes wide 
open, and nostrils snuffing. He was thirsty and 
did not care to disguise the fact. The dog always 
watched the hole I was digging as though he ex- 
pected to see rabbits jump out of it. That occa- 
sionally I found gold-dust (seen under a small 
magnifying-glass) at the bottom of a pot-hole did 
not interest me very much, and the animals not 
at all. We were not gold-seekers, though I dare 
say had it appeared in more substantial quantities 
my interest would have increased. 

Water I sometimes found oozing out drop by 
drop from some ledge at the foot of the mountains, 
and at other times I met with green catches of 
water in rock cisterns cut in the granite centuries 
ago by some grinding-stone. The latter was 
usually exposed to the air and light and un- 
wholesome, but I made it potable by cutting up 
cactus lobes and dropping slices into it. That 
[83] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

settled and cleared the water, and after boiling it 
in cups I could drink it. But' desert water, at 
best, proved a hard drink. Sometimes it was 
brackish from too much salt, and probably some 
of it was poisonous from too much copper, though 
I never experienced any effects of poisoning. It 
was usually blue with alkali, which was bad 
enough. 

A clear little drip of water from a ledge of rock 
was something not often found and so very ac- 
ceptable that it was difficult to leave. I stayed 
beside such a spring oftentimes for a week, watch- 
ing at morning and evening to see what animals 
came to drink. I can remember nothing four- 
footed ever appearing at such a place except a 
lynx, and he was after birds, not water. The rab- 
bits, coyotes, and desert deer never appeared, even 
in the offing. But the quail came, and the Sonora 
pigeon with mourning-doves were always hovering 
about such a dripping spring. I cannot remember, 
however, that the quail ever drank the water. 

In a week after my first venture in the desert 
I had trained myself to get on with about one- 
third of the water I would normally drink. Day 
after day I went from sunrise to sunset with- 
out drinking. If my mouth became dried out I 
[84] 



DESERT DAYS 

chewed a few leaves of greasewood (creosote-bush); 
if the day was terrifically hot — that is, one hun- 
dred and twenty-five in the shade — and I was 
tramping or moving, I would slash into a barrel 
cactus (bisnaga) or a column cactus (suhuaro) 
with my hatchet and get out some of the juicy 
pulp. It was usually bitter or sour to the taste, 
but it held sufficient water in it to quench thirst. 
The desert Indians always knew about these cacti, 
but I never met with a white man who saw in 
them anything but curious bundles of thorns. 

The horse bothered me less in the matter of his 
feed than his water. A desert valley where one 
would think a goat unable to pick a living from 
a thousand acres would, nevertheless, grow in the 
spring excellent feed grass in bunches in between 
the greasewood. It mattered not that in summer 
it was dried out, that it lay crumpled and broken 
on the ground, or that it was piled up in small sec- 
tions around ant-hills. Its nutritive power was 
in no way impaired by its dryness. Horses and 
cattle knew how to find it, and they throve upon 
it. If the valleys were too alkaline for it to grow, 
it would almost always be found on the mountain- 
sides. The higher up the better the grass. And 
there was brush growth up there that made good 
[85] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

browsing. So, all told, the matter of horse feed 
was not so desperate as water. In climbing the 
mountainsides for the one, we also secured the 
other, and almost always the night-camp was 
made up in the hills rather than down in the hot 
valleys. 

The ideal camping-ground was under a live 
oak — when I could find one. The mountain 
ranges were usually covered with a thin chaparral, 
dry, tough, stick-like; and not at all a cooling 
shade or a blest retreat. Trees were scarce and 
I usually slept on any flat piece of ground in the 
open, near some small yucca palm or palo verde 
upon which I could hang my camp supplies and 
keep them away from rodents. During the sum- 
mer months there was not the slightest danger of 
rain and very little cause for apprehension from 
other sources. At first I picketed and hoppled 
the horse, but I found after a week or ten days 
that he had forgotten his back track and was not 
disposed to leave. On the contrary, he was 
always edging in or looking toward the camp as 
though apprehensive lest the dog and I might 
move off unexpectedly and leave him tied to his 
stake. He was uneasy and snorted much, and so 
finally I turned him loose and let him trail his 
[86] 



DESERT DAYS 

rope. He never wandered far, and in the morn- 
ing the dog soon rounded him up and drove him 
into camp. 

The dog (a large fox-terrier) was very intelli- 
gent about all camp work, and soon came to under- 
stand what was expected of him besides shaking 
ground-squirrels and retrieving wounded rabbits. 
It was no part of his breeding to herd horses, but 
under stress he soon picked it up. His natural 
instinct served him in good stead. He would 
fight anything I set him at, except a rattlesnake. 
Any other snake he would shake until the snake- 
ends around his ears resembled a spinning-wheel; 
but he instinctively kept away from a rattler. 

Both the dog and the horse were company for 
me and, being talked at continually, they came 
to understand my language much better than the 
average animals at home. That first summer 
slipped by without any accident of importance. 
One moonlight night the horse, trailing a loose 
rope, came plunging through the camp, but there 
was good reason for it. Three gray wolves (not 
coyotes) were close behind him. He had been 
grazing half a mile away when the wolves (prob- 
ably starved out by a very dry year) jumped him. 
Strangely enough, though it may have been acci- 
C87i 



THE OPEN SPACES 

dental, he ran straight toward the camp as though 
for protection, instead of heading down the valley, 
where he surely would have been overhauled. I 
heard the hard beat of his hoofs on the ground 
and knew instantly that something was chasing 
him. I caught up my rifle as he came into sight. 
The wolves came on fifty yards behind him as 
though they had already settled down to a long, 
slow chase. When within twenty yards, I shot. 
They were the most surprised wolves imaginable, 
and at the report jumped straight up in the air, 
swerved to one side like a deflected wave, and ran 
off down the valley at an accelerated pace — one 
of them apparently running on three legs and 
lagging behind. I shot several times, but the 
light was too uncertain and nothing dropped. 

In travelling on the desert both the horse and 
the dog objected to the heat of the day. Early 
morning or late at evening they were full of life, 
and night-work they seemed to enjoy; but after 
the sun had been up an hour or more the sands 
became too hot for them. The terrier would sit 
down under a patch of greasewood and howl, re- 
fusing to go on. I usually went back, caught him 
by the scruff of the neck, and pulled him up on 
the saddle behind me. He would brace himself 
[88] 



DESERT DAYS 

against my back, standing crosswise of the horse, 
and hold on even when we went at a hard gallop. 
I made him some buckskin shoes, which I tied 
•fast just above his dew-claws with a buckskin 
thongj but he worried with them and finally 
pulled them off with his teeth. 

The horse in the middle of the day developed 
a great longing for the shade, even though it 
were merely the very thin shade of a mesquite 
or a suhuaro. I myself was not averse to the 
shadow side of a rock at noontime, and often 
crept into a wind-worn recess for a nap, after 
having evicted any snake or scorpion tenantry 
that might be on the premises. Riding in the 
late morning or early afternoon was hot work. 
Resting up in the mountains and there watching 
the movements of scattered mountain-sheep or 
the flight of vultures seemed more profitable. 

The horse evidently thought the same way, for 
he was always willing to go up into the mountains. 
He was an excellent, sure-footed beast, and could 
negotiate cracks to be jumped and escarpments 
to be descended quite as well as his master. And 
I never had to lead him to feed of any kind. His 
ability in rustling the screw-beans from a mesquite 
or the bunch-grass from a cholla patch was some- 
[89] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

thing more than remarkable. Sometimes I won- 
dered if he had other and finer instincts. At 
dawn and dusk the sky effects seen from the 
mountain tops were very beautiful, with many 
varieties of gas-blue, pink, and orange colored 
air; I wondered if the horse standing beside me 
ever saw them. 

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the days 
up there were the nights. Lying on the blankets, 
with the warm air blowing over my face, the 
great hush of the desert all about, and the far 
mightier hush of starry space overhead, was 
always an inspiration rather than a loneliness. I 
may admit that there were times when a dreary 
feeling crept over me, but the morning sun always 
dispelled it. As for fear, there was nothing to be 
afraid of except my own decisions about water. 
The fear of man was wholly eliminated, and as 
for the wolves or other animals, they were more 
afraid of me than I of them. 

Illness ? I was already ill and went into the 
open of the desert to get well. Many of my days 
in there were ill days. But I kept busy making 
notes and studying vegetation and animals. I 
had determined to write a book about the desert, 
and it was necessary that I should know my sub- 
£90} 



DESERT DAYS 

ject,* That was one of the reasons for my going 
into the interior. Why did I go alone ? Because I 
could find no one to go with me. They were all 
afraid of— nothing. 

That was a summer of strange wanderings. 
The memory of them comes back to me now 
mingled with half-obliterated impressions of white 
light, lilac air, heliotrope mountains, blue sky. I 
cannot well remember the exact route of the 
Odyssey, for I kept no record of my movements. 
I was not travelling by map. I was wandering 
for health and desert information. My journey- 
ings took me through the Coast Range, the San 
Bernardino Ranges, the Salton Basin (it was be- 
fore the Imperial Valley was known or planned), 
down into Mexico and the mud volcano region, 
around the mouth of the Colorado, over into Ari- 
zona, down along the border into Sonora and far 
down toward Tiburon Island. On the way there 
were lost mountains to explore, odd spines of 
rock standing like monuments in the desert, old 
Indian forts on barren peaks, great adobe build- 



* The book {The Desert, New York, 1901) was written during that 
first summer at odd intervals when I lay with my back against a 
rock or propped up in the sand. What success it had I attribute 
almost entirely to the fact that I knew the desert at first-hand and 
wrote about it with intimate knowledge. 

[91] 



THE OPEN SPACES, 

ings (somewhat like the Casa Grande but of more 
modern origin) that I still vaguely remember see- 
ing in ruins somewhere beyond Arivaca, strange 
strata of rock, stranger flows of lava, pot-holes 
and water-holes and mountain-sheep and desert 
antelope. 

In southern Arizona and Sonora I often met 
with Papago and Yaki Indians who were friendly 
and helpful. They talked some Spanish, with 
much sign-language, and always seemed puzzled 
over me. They could not understand my being 
out there alone. The Indian mind is very ma- 
terial and is closely connected with things to eat, 
or at least something of palpable gain. To ex- 
plain one's being in the desert just for the love 
of the open spaces of earth and sky was to them 
no explanation at all but merely some paleface 
lie set forth to throw them off the scent. I was 
usually thought to be in search of that lost Pegleg 
mine, or to know something about gold-washings 
somewhere in the desert. 

That year in Sonora I did explore an old aban- 
doned and forgotten mine, and a Yaki Indian 
took me to it by a very roundabout and difficult 
trail. The mine was evidently his unique secret 
and he did not want the trail to it known. I re- 
[92} 



DESERT DAYS 

member his riding a thin burro about as large as 
a Shetland pony, and that going down a steep 
rocky canyon the burro kept falling down. Every 
time the burro fell the Indian, whose feet were 
trailing on the ground, would pick the little beast 
up, stand him on his feet, and the journey would 
be continued. We at last arrived at the hidden 
entrance of a tunnel under the base of a huge 
mountain. The heated sulphureous air in the 
tunnel was stifling, but we made our way into the 
heart of the mountain, I with a handkerchief to 
my nose. 

It seemed as though the whole interior of that 
mountain had been dug out. There were gal- 
leries everywhere, with mesquite ladders leading 
up and down, and enormous chambers that had 
been cut and caverned by the heavy tools of Yaki 
Indians. There were evidences of old blasting 
by lime and water and grinding of ore between 
heavy stones operated by burros — what the Yaki 
called a **rastre" (arrastre).* But nothing had 
been worked or touched in a hundred years. The 
whole place was as silent as the interior of an 
Egyptian pyramid. No doubt the Mexicans had 

* An old Spanish mill with a vat in which a heavy round stone, 
propelled by a horizontal beam, crushed ore and prepared it for 
washing. 

[93] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

taken much gold out by working only the richest 
leads, and no doubt they left much behind them 
still in the rock. I never made further inquiry, 
and was not interested in the mine's commercial 
possibilities. My going there was merely a chance 
look into a forgotten treasure-house. I came away 
without the traditional bagful of gold, and was, in 
fact, so indifferent to the mine's money value 
that I made no topographical or mental note 
of it. 

Another Sonora Indian (I think he was a Ceri 
and perhaps belonged on Tiburon Island), in 
recognition of a gift of some tobacco, took me on 
quite a different excursion. We went to the 
washed-out bed of a dry river. It was in the heat 
of summer and there had been no water in the 
bed for some months. Under the banks there 
were large caves that had been cut out of the soft 
soil by the rush and wear of water during storm 
periods. In these caves, much to my surprise, 
I found, not an occasional coyote with puppies, 
but a gathering of litters of puppies. As we 
walked down the dry bed of the river the mothers 
and little ones hustled out and away ahead of us. 
There seemed to be a whole colony of coyotes in 
that river-bed, hiding from the sun and measur- 



DESERT DAYS 

ably protected in their lairs from enemies. That, 
I think, was one of the most astounding things 
in natural history that I ever met with. Wolves 
of all sorts sometimes run in packs but they do 
not breed in packs. On the contrary, the rule is 
that each litter is whelped in some lair very much 
secluded and away from others of the species. 

In western Sonora, in the Tiburon Island region, 
I occasionally met Ceri Indians — two or three in 
a group — who always waved their hands over 
their heads and wanted to talk tobacco. They 
had not a very good reputation among the Mexi- 
cans (though the story that they were cannibals 
had not then been widely circulated), and where 
there were more than two in the group I never 
let them approach mc. They usually understood 
when I shook my head and waved them away 
with my rifle. One day a group of four or five 
persisted in coming on, in spite of my signal, and 
I fired a cartridge across their bows. Then they 
scampered away in beautiful style and continued 
to run until out of sight. 

One or two of them I always felt I could cope 

with and allowed them to come close. Usually 

they would begin by digging into the bundle of 

rags in which they were clothed, and, after much 

[95] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

search, bring to light a small phial stoppered with 
a stick or a plug of cloth. They would carefully 
withdraw the stopper and pour into the palms 
of their skinny hands a mass of small but quite 
genuine pearls — pearls they had gathered from 
the oysters of the California Gulf. They were 
not of any great value but they seemed to answer 
as token money in bartering. They would swap 
them for anything I had — tobacco preferred at 
the head of the list. 

I never met any white people in the Sonora 
Desert, but, when I rode out of the desert to- 
ward the Sonora railway, I met with Mexicans, 
peons, and Yaki Indians on the outlying ranches. 
The Yakis at that time did most of the work on 
the ranches and were the most industrious and 
capable Indians I had ever known. About the 
time I was there an American syndicate greatly 
coveted the lands belonging to their tribe on the 
Yaki River. The Indians had been living there 
and farming the lands for two hundred years or 
more, but in spite of that the government at the 
City of Mexico sold the lands over their heads to 
the American syndicate and the Indians were 
ordered to vacate, without compensation. They 
declined to do so. The "Yaki War" ensued, the 
a 96} 



DESERT DAYS 

object of which on the part of the government 
was to exterminate the Yakis and thus clear the 
title to the land. 

The Mexican troops were reported as giving no 
quarter and taking no prisoners. In Guaymas I 
twice saw bands of Yakis, made up of old men, 
women, and children, marched through the streets 
for deportation by steamer to Yucatan. There was 
not a young man or a warrior among them. Ugly 
tales were told of other bands of prisoners that 
had been shipped out from Guaymas on the old 
gunboat "Oaxaca" and never reached Yucatan. 
The boat came back after a few hours at sea with- 
out the prisoners. If Yaki warriors fell into the 
hands of the rurales (Mexican troops) by chance, 
it was said they were lined up and shot or hung 
to trees. One day while riding the eastern part 
of Sonora I noticed a gathering of buzzards. I 
rode to the centre of attraction expecting to find 
some dead animal, but I found two Yaki Indians 
hanging from a large mesquite. They had been 
hanging there for several weeks. As for the cause, 
or right or wrong of the war, the general super- 
intendent of the American syndicate told me, in 
my room at the Alameda Hotel in Guaymas, that 
they (the syndicate) had the Indian lands and the 
[97] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

Indians were fighting 'to get them back. That, 
he said, was the whole trouble put in a nut- 
shell. 

Many of the Yakis, during the disturbance, 
stayed on the Mexican ranches where they had 
been employed, and did not participate in the 
war. They were known as peaceful Yakis in 
contradistinction to the hostiles, but of recent 
years all distinction has been confused and the 
Yakis as a tribe have been called murderers and 
bandits and declared to be worse than the old 
Chiricahua Apaches. The declaration still ap- 
pears from time to time in the American press, 
but it is not, and never was, true. Every Mexican 
in Sonora at the time the war started knew the 
Yakis to be quiet, hard-working, intelligent In- 
dians. Everywhere I went on the ranches they 
were well spoken of. I saw and talked with scores 
of them on the ranges, in the corrals, in the fields, 
in their camps. They were always kindly and 
gentle — more so, I used to think, than their prog- 
eny. The small boys ran about naked like brown 
lizards, and used to look at me out of the corners 
of their eyes like coyote puppies. Their black 
hair was bleached to a copper color, their thin 
bodies were sun-scorched, and their expression 
[98] 



DESERT DAYS 

was half-wolfish. But I never knew any harm to 
come from them. 

Those were the days of open-handed hospital- 
ity on the Mexican ranches. No introduction was 
necessary. People came and went on horseback, 
hung their saddles on pegs and their hats on the 
floor, and stayed as long as they liked. Every- 
where I stopped I was welcomed. The owner 
came in from the fields, knocked off work for the 
day, produced tequila, coffee, cigarettes, and sat 
down under the porch for a talk. The coffee- 
pot and bean-pot were always over the fire and 
in constant requisition. There was no great 
variety of food at the table, but the meats and 
vegetables were tastily cooked, and, if there were 
young girls in the family, there was singing, to 
the accompaniment of the guitar, during and 
after the dinner. When it came to retiring for 
the night, one simply dragged out a rawhide 
or canvas cot to whatever part of the premises 
he pleased, spread his blankets, and went to 
sleep listening to the dogs chasing coyotes. 
The hospitality was very simple, whole-hearted, 
and very gratefully received because of its fine 
spirit. 

The amusements on the Sonora ranches were 
[99] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

limited, but there were horses to ride and strange 
things to be seen by riding. Every Sunday was 
a fiesta. People would gather for a wolf-hunt, a 
cock-fight, or a horse-race — the latter two being 
easily improvised. Interest in the race never 
waned because there was always much betting, 
plenty of jockeying, and some fine exhibitions of 
bareback riding. The Mexican peons (half- 
breeds) and Indians were superb riders. Our 
cowboy at the north was merely a nouveau com- 
pared to them. Riding was their inheritance as 
well as their lifelong occupation. It seemed to 
me always better understood in Sonora than any 
other part of Mexico because, perhaps, it was an 
open country. Farther south toward the City 
of Mexico and beyond it in Oaxaca and Tehuan- 
tepec there were larger ranches, more peons, more 
horses; but I never felt that the southern riders 
had the skill in riding of the Sonorans. 

Hospitality at the south was quite as open- 
handed as at the north, and the great haciendas 
below the City of Mexico had more to offer in 
food, lodging, and entertainment, but I somehow 
always fancied the meagreness and the generous 
spirit of those in Sonora who had little but were 
willing to share that little with you. Alas ! that 
[100] 



DESERT DAYS 



most of it has gone by! The hospitality was 
abused and the door had to be closed. Extending 
the brotherhood of man by travel and contact 
sometimes produces unexpected results. 



[101] 



CHAPTER VI 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

Riding in the desert, or elsewhere, with the 
horse doing most of the work, seems an easy way 
of getting over the ground. It is certainly not 
to be despised, and many are the things that may 
be seen to advantage from a horse's back. Be- 
sides, you can go far in a given time — something 
that may also be said for the automobile. But 
neither from a horse nor from an automobile can 
you see well or accurately the small things of 
creation. You are too high up to count the petals 
of the flowers, or to watch the trap-door spider 
emerge from his den, or to trail a side-winder in 
the sand. Many things must be seen afoot. 
There are also advantages in being alone. Often- 
times you wish to stop, turn back, examine anew, 
perhaps photograph, or sketch, and the impatience 
of a companion to get somewhere in time for din- 
ner is something of a nuisance. 

Now being afoot suggests at the start that your 
feet are to bear the brunt of the work and should 
be properly shod. And just here comes in a differ- 
[102] 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

ence of opinion or of experience. The average 
white man thinks himself well shod when he is 
heavily shod. He likes a double-soled army shoe 
with calks in it — preferably one that laces up 
half-way to the knee. If there be no high upper 
he wears a pigskin puttee, with khaki trousers, a 
stiff coat, and a cork helmet, or something equally 
cumbersome. As for the shoes, he tells you that 
he likes the calks because he wants to be sure of 
his footing; but on shelving rock a nailed shoe 
can never be trusted for a moment. More than 
half the accidents in mountain-climbing, in the 
Alps or elsewhere, are due to the slip of this same 
shoe. The weight of it leads, too often, to fatigue 
and stumbling, while the heat of it is discomfort 
ever and always. As protection against stones, 
lava, cactus, chaparral, snakes, it is wholly un- 
necessary. Any one who walks much in any dry 
country mechanically watches the placing of his 
feet and does not go blundering into snakes or 
cactus patches or lava-beds. After a time his feet 
pick and choose for themselves where they shall 
step and what they shall avoid, just as his body 
pushes through brush without getting tangled in 
vines, or his hands turn aside dry twigs without 
being punctured by spines. 
[103] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

The heavy shoe or boot of any sort is not the 
foot-gear for a dry country, though it may serve 
moderately well in wet-snow regions. Instead of 
following the Englishman, who usually insists 
upon dragging London into the tropics, I always 
preferred to follow the Indian, whose knowledge 
of his own country and its necessities was better 
than that of any one else. In travelling over sand 
or grass or mountain country, I always wore the 
moccasin. It was light on the foot, pliable, al- 
lowed every foot-muscle to play, and held fast 
wherever one put weight upon it. Hundreds of 
times in the desert mountains or in the high 
Rockies, or along the ledges of the Grand Canyon, 
I have gone down to the edge of shelving strata 
and looked over precipices into far depths with a 
feeling of perfect security. I knew the moccasin 
would not slip, for I had the feel of the rock in 
my foot. Such ventures with an army shoe or 
any heavy-soled foot-gear would have been highly 
dangerous, if not impossible. In jumping cre- 
vasses, in vaulting with an alpenstock, in climb- 
ing rock faces, in travelling through grass or sand, 
or creeping along lava-flows, the moccasin has al- 
ways proved a success and a delight to me. With 
it I was springy on my feet, and could run on for 
[104] 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

long distances with not half the fatigue that would 
come from wearing an army shoe. 

But it should be said that I am not speaking 
about the moccasins of the present-day shoe- 
store or of the curio-shop. Those moccasins are 
not made to wear but to sell. They are made of 
thin skins of goat or sheep or young calf (not 
moose), are not properly dressed, and have no 
wearing quality. Good buckskin is no longer 
obtainable, but in my desert-walking days I had 
the true skin, taken from the back of the mule-deer 
and Indian tanned. I made my own moccasins. 
They were pointed-toed after the Sioux model 
which I had learned in my youth. Instead of 
sewing them with sinews, as the Sioux, I used 
thin buckskin thongs, sewed an upper upon them 
somewhat Hke a spat, and put on an extra sole 
and heel of heavy hide. The extra sole and heel 
would last for about one hundred and seventy- 
five miles. They were then worn through, and 
I replaced them by new ones. 

I am still cherishing some of that deerskin for 
a last pair of moccasins, conscious that I shall 
never see its hke again; but the traveller of to-day 
will probably never know anything better for 
desert wear than the rubber sneaker or the rubber- 
[105] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

soled tennis-shoe. Some of the Indians in the 
Southwest still wear moccasins with rawhide 
soles, but they are not satisfactory. The sneaker 
affords a better foothold. 

Aside from lightness, durability, and ground- 
gripping quality, I always found moccasins a ne- 
cessity in hunting because of their noiselessness. 
One could not still-hunt deer in a dry stick-and- 
leaf country with a heavy boot. The grind of 
gravel under your boot would start a mule-deer 
bounding long before he had either seen you or 
winded you. If you placed your feet right, the 
moccasin was soundless. I well remember one 
day in the Mohave Desert, when I was walking 
without a gun, seeing a coyote pawing or eating 
something behind a small but rather thick brush 
of cactus and greasewood. The wind was blow- 
ing from him to me and I could almost smell that 
coyote, but he could not smell me. Neither 
could he see me. I sneaked up so close to him 
that I could touch the brush, and yet he did not 
hear me. A momentary twist of the wind, how- 
ever, gave him my scent, to which he violently 
reacted, and with a tremendous bound sprang 
clear over the brush to my side. So close he 
came to me that I made a desperate kick at him, 
[106] 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

to which he responded with a steel-trap snap of 
his teeth. My first momentary impression was 
that he was attacking me, but the speedy manner 
in which he put distance between us as soon as 
his feet struck the ground convinced me that he 
had sprung at haphazard, on the scent, and did 
not see me until in mid-air. 

My second summer in the deserts was almost 
wholly a matter of long walks — usually in circles 
of twenty or thirty miles about a new water-hole 
or a railway tank-car. The horse became some- 
thing of a nuisance and I got rid of him; but the 
fox-terrier still went with me, and was as tough, 
as cunning, and as brave as ever. I hunted much 
that summer, but without a rifle. Occasionally, 
when hard pushed for something to eat, I shot 
small game with my pistol, and I had to pot a 
jack-rabbit frequently for the dog; but I had no 
inclination to kill large game, or to kill anything 
merely for the sport of it. Still, I liked to hunt, 
to trail all sorts of animals and birds, and find out 
what they were doing, where going, and how they 
lived. Watching the actions of desert quail, or 
the play of lizards, or the sneak of a wildcat, or 
the saunterings of a coyote always proved attrac- 
tive. 

[107] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

The moccasins on my feet enabled me to move 
without sound, and my garb was generally neu- 
tral or sand-colored, so that I was not conspicuous 
as an object; but it nevertheless took some knowl- 
edge and skill to come up with the quarry in open 
country. Trailing on dry desert ground is not 
the easiest thing in the world. Tracking a cotton- 
tail rabbit after the first snowfall of the year is 
a feat upon which every boy prided himself; but 
tracking a jack-rabbit in the desert is something 
that every one — white man, peon, or Indian — 
gives up before he begins. The trail is too faint. 

There were stretches of the desert where the 
gravel floors and basins were so hard and smooth 
that a buffalo or an elephant would scarcely leave 
a trail. There were also lava-flows, granite out- 
crops, and hard mesas where again no foot left 
any print. It was useless to bother with such 
places, and the only thing to do was to pick up 
the trail where it went in or came out. There 
were often great reaches of wind-blown sand, or 
beds of alkali or white gypsum, or dry lake-beds 
with incrusted surfaces, where the hoofs of a 
deer or the pad of a wolf would show quite clearly 
for perhaps a day after being made. If the wind 
was blowing, and the sand or gypsum drifting, the 
[1081 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

trail would soon be obliterated. When I found a 
trail in such places, I had to study out what the 
game was doing. If the trail ran straight, then the 
animal was crossing the desert and was bound for 
some distant retreat in the mountains; if the trail 
rambled, doubled, crossed, and wandered, then the 
animal was playing or hunting. I had to make 
my guess about the animal's state of mind and 
what would be the general trend of the trail 
when he emerged from the beds. 

It depended upon a good many circumstances 
whether desert-trailing was a success or a failure. 
I always found it a mixture of both. Following 
up three or four antelope in a band, when there 
were still a few left down in Sonora, seemed a very 
easy affair, because where one sharp hoof failed 
to record, another one would; but I was often 
puzzled over a single mule-deer and many times 
had to abandon the quest. The pointed toes 
would push into soft sand or an alkali crust, or 
leave disturbed stones on loose gravel, but it 
made no record on the hard mesas or on rock or 
lava or talus. The soft foot of a lynx or wolf or 
cougar could not be seen except in sand or loose 
ground, and was very difficult to follow unless the 
animal was running or plunging hard upon his 
[109] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

feet. And, of course, the reptiles and small 
animals left no trace at all except in the sands or 
white lake-beds. If little wind was blowing the 
beds and dunes recorded all sorts of footprints 
— the trail of a lizard or rat or road-runner or 
quail, as easily as the foot of a coyote or a deer. 
There you could see the curious throw to one 
side of the side-winder and would know exactly 
how and why he got his name; and there, too, 
were the heavy drag of the Gila monster, the 
wriggle of the horned toad; even, at times, the 
dotted trail of the centipede. 

Almost all animals have the wise habit of 
watching their back track. A desert deer, for 
example, will browse along leisurely through a 
cholla patch or an open chaparral on the moun- 
tainside, stopping to kick a fly off his ear with his 
hind foot or scratch his back against a dry 
branch, but never neglecting to look behind to 
see what, if anything, is following him. This 
they are always doing, and it is almost impossible 
to approach them from the back trail without 
being seen. The experienced still-hunter, fol- 
lowing any kind of deer, works off to the side of 
the trail, perhaps two hundred yards or more, 
occasionally swinging in to see that he is foUow- 
[110] 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

ing the general direction. He determines at the 
start the lay of the land, the habit of the deer at 
that time of day, whether feeding, lying down, or 
slowly moving. From this he evolves an idea of 
the animal's intent and direction, to which the 
trail is only a general clew. Beating along like 
a hound on a scent will have only barren results 
unless you are running the deer down, hound- 
fashion, as the Indians sometimes do. That 
means jumping the game again and again until 
it gets weary and careless and allows of being 
approached near enough to be shot. 

As illustrating the folly of following a deer 
trail closely, I recall an incident of cowboy days 
in Montana that may be pertinent just here. I 
was camped one evening at sunset with some 
eighteen or twenty cow-punchers on the banks 
of the Big Powder River. We had in camp a 
Western surveyor named Sheets who had come 
out from Miles City to run some lines for a home 
ranch. He had the reputation in Montana of 
being a great deer-hunter, and that evening at 
supper he was bewailing the fact that there was 
no venison in camp. Almost as he spoke, and 
while the rest of us were eating, two white-tailed 
deer put their heads out of the willow brush on a 

[111] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

long thin island in the river just opposite to our 
camp. Colonel Sheets reached for his rifle, but 
before he could get it to his shoulder the deer had 
drawn back into cover. He advised the cowboys 
to sit still and keep quiet for a few minutes and 
there would be venison for breakfast. He then 
started to wade across the shallow water to the 
point where the deer had shown themselves, and 
soon disappeared in the brush, as they had done. 
I watched the proceeding with blank amaze- 
ment. I knew the deer could not be rounded up 
or shot in that way; knew that they would keep 
a hundred yards or so ahead of him, just out of 
his sight in the thick brush, and that eventually 
he would walk them off the far end of the island 
into the river. As soon as he had disappeared 
in the willows I took up my rifle, remarking casu- 
ally that I thought I might get the coloneFs deer. 
I made a half-circle detour back from the river 
and brought up on the river-bank just opposite 
the lower end of the island. There, seated on a 
Cottonwood log, I awaited developments. Pres- 
ently I heard the snap of a twig and the two deer 
came out on the end of the island, trotted down 
on a sparsely covered sand-bar, and gave me a 
good shot. I knocked the buck over, and the doe 
tll2] 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

with a tremendous plunge hit the deep current 
of the stream and started to swim for the far 
shore. I let her go and sat still. 

Presently the colonel, breaking his way through 
the willows, came out on the island's end follow- 
ing the deer trail. He did not see me and so 
helloed. I answered. He wanted to know who 
fired that shot. I admitted that I did the shooting. 

"Well, what were you shooting at? You 
scared my deer." 

"No. I shot at them." 

"Did you hit *em?" 

"Yes; the buck." 

"Where is he?" 

"Follow the trail and you will come to him." 

I crossed over to the sand-bar, by wading the 
shallow water on my side the river, and we came 
together over the dead deer. He kicked him and 
got no response, looked at me from head to foot 
several times, and then remarked: 

"Well, ril be damned!" 

The colonel never quite loved me after that. 
The cow-punchers nagged him about driving deer 
for an Eastern tenderfoot. Even they, who knew 
nothing about deer, saw that the great deer- 
slayer had dropped a stitch. 
[113} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

That deer watch their back track is common 
enough knowledge among hunters; but what is 
less known is that in watching you they are al- 
ways looking at your eye, not your hand or foot 
or gun. In thick brush the white-tailed deer, or 
in the chaparral the mule-deer, will stand still 
and hide and let you pass within a few feet of 
him so long as he is sure you do not see him; but 
let your eye rest for a moment on any part of 
his dun hide or dark horn, and there is a great 
bound, a smash and crash of brush, and a rush 
to get away. He knows instantly when you see 
him and is ready for a spring. 

On a gunless walk one day through the open 
pine regions of northern Arizona my attention 
was attracted to some very fresh deer tracks. 
There had been a shower, the ground was moist, 
and the hoof-prints were sharp-edged, clean-cut. 
I made a circle of a mile but did not find any trail 
leading out. I then began a close examination 
of every little thicket within the circle. In look- 
ing over a small group of bush oaks my eye was 
caught by a dull-gray spot no larger than a black- 
ing-box cover. The moment my eyes fastened 
on it the spot jumped — jumped clear over the 
tops of the bush oaks and started to run. It was 
[114} 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

a doe, and she had not run thirty yards before she 
stopped, turned around, and looked at me. That 
was suspicious. I immediately went softly toward 
the place from which she had jumped, moved 
slowly, and watched the ground carefully. Pres- 
ently I detected two little fawns, only a few days 
old, lying flat on the ground with their heads 
down and their ears back. The instant I saw 
them they jumped and started to run after their 
mother — their thin hind legs wabbling but, never- 
theless, taking them over the ground very fast. 
The doe had been hiding and watching my eye, 
and the fawns had been doing the same thing. 

All animals have the habit of watching the eye 
of the enemy whatever that enemy may be. It 
is probably a universal habit that will apply to 
man as well as to beast and bird. If you have an 
idea that a dog may bite or a horse kick, you do 
not watch the animal's mouth or heels, but his 
eye. And, of course, people watch each other's 
eyes in conversation, in play, in prize-fighting, 
in love. The reason is not far to seek, because 
the eye is the index of the mind. There is indica- 
tion of the mental attitude, and in perceiving or 
judging that attitude the animal is almost as 
shrewd as the human. 

[115] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

Almost, but not quite, because I doubt that the 
average animal, say deer, coyote, or wolf, has so 
keen an eye as the human. A deer, for example, 
has a very comprehensive eye for anything that 
moves, but not for stationary objects. If you 
stand motionless, he will not discriminate between 
you and a stump. He may look you over for a 
long time, and perhaps think you an oddity in 
the landscape, but if you do not move, he will 
accept you as a fixture. When he sees you in 
motion and knows you do not see him, he will 
often stand still, with great complacency, and 
survey you for many minutes. The antelope will 
do the same thing. And nothing seems to please 
the coyote so much as to sit quietly on a hill and 
watch you in and out of the landscape and he 
not moving from his perch. 

Motion — any object or animal in motion — 
seems always fascinating to the deer or sheep 
family. There were some mountain-sheep (not 
bighorns) in the San Bernardino Ranges twenty 
years ago — a few still remain there — and I was 
much interested in their comings and goings. In 
the heat of summer they occasionally had to have 
water and would come down cautiously to some 
desert drip or pot-hole, watching on every side 

[116] 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

as they descended. A wave of a stick would bring 
the whole band to attention. There they would 
hang perfectly motionless on the mountainside, 
for half an hour at a time, watching for a repeti- 
tion of that motion. With their sand-colored 
coats they were quite imperceptible to the casual 
glance, and once your eye had wandered away 
and lost them it was difficult to pick them up 
again. 

In the eastern Alps I have often observed the 
chamois feeding on the high uplands and keep- 
ing a lookout for the approach of an enemy at 
the same time. They would nibble for only a 
moment and then, with heads up, would sniff 
the air, look above, below, on all sides of them. 
They came to a standstill over any moving ob- 
ject and watched it intently until it passed out 
of sight. If it came their way, they took to their 
heels quickly enough. The antelope, as every 
one knows, has more curiosity than others of his 
family and will often, step by step, approach a 
moving object, stamping and snorting, head up 
and eyes bulging. His curiosity (or what is in 
effect the same thing, his undiscriminating eye) 
is often the death of him. A red flag on a stick, 
or a hat on the muzzle of a rifle, waved slowly at 
[117] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

intervals, will prove his undoing. He must find 
out what it is all about, and gets shot for his pains. 

Perhaps the birds, as a class, are not so clear- 
sighted as the animals, though there are enough 
exceptions to invalidate any rule that one could 
lay down about it. What, for instance, could be 
more keen than the eye of the hawk, the eagle, 
or the vulture ? The vulture, as he wheels down 
a valley, cutting great circles in the air, seems 
to see everything animate or inanimate for miles 
around. He is not only beating over vast terri- 
tory for his own profit, but he is watching the 
hunt of every other vulture in the sky. When 
one of them drops to earth it is a signal that he 
has found something, and from all points of the 
compass his companions drop after him. It is 
thought by some people that the vulture scents 
his carrion prey and arrives at it through his nose, 
but that seems a mere flight of fancy. No one 
can prove or disprove it. On the contrary, sight, 
with which the vulture sees a fellow bird a mile 
away descending to the ground, is susceptible of 
direct proof. His eye alone is sufficient to find 
his quarry. 

Often in the desert mountains, resting in the 
saddle of a range between two valleys, I have 
[118] 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

had the vultures, passing from one valley to the 
other, come within ten feet of me. I have watched 
their bright eyes for what they could see as I have 
watched their flight-feathers for a solution of 
their flying powers, but nothing of information 
came to me from either. He sees everything, he 
glides on any air in any direction; but how he 
does the one or the other I am not able to explain. 

All the raptores have bright enough eyes, but I 
am not sure about the game-birds, song-birds, 
and water-fowl being well equipped in the matter 
of sight. Those that live by the chase, such as 
the pelicans, divers, shags, and cormorants, or 
the insectivorous among song-birds, have some 
sense of sight or they would not continue to exist; 
but the mere fact that a flicker digs ants out of 
a hill or a robin pulls an earthworm out of its 
hole does not indicate any great acuteness of 
vision. I have rubbed the head of a robin on the 
nest with the end of a walking-stick until she closed 
her eyes and went into a drowse, and I once picked 
up a perfectly sound woodcock hiding in the grass. 
A woodcock is supposed to have eyes that see on 
all sides of him, but I have usually found them 
rather dull-sighted birds. 

Not so the quail and the pheasant. They see 
L119] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

quickly and surely, but sometimes will lie close 
(even after you see them) in the hope of escap- 
ing detection. Crane and geese are very keen- 
eyed and wary. In coming into a wild-rice lake 
for night shelter, geese will survey the premises 
from high up in the air with great accuracy. If 
alarmed, or even if not entirely satisfied of safety, 
they will climb higher up in the air with whiff of 
wing and honk of throat and move farther on; 
if the appearances do not disturb them they will 
descend over the open water in graceful spirals 
straight from the zenith. Ducks are more care- 
less, and some of them, especially the black ducks 
and winter ducks, seem to have very dull eyes, 
for a boat in the open can often approach them 
within shooting distance. 

On the desert perhaps the sharpest-eyed of all 
the birds is the road-runner. His ability in spy- 
ing out all sorts of reptiles and insects is on a par 
with his ability to capture them. It is astonish- 
ing how easily he will pick up a running lizard — 
astonishing when the running powers and quick- 
ness of the lizard are considered. And the road- 
runner is the only bird of the desert that can suc- 
cessfully dodge a rattlesnake. The snake is 
usually rather slow in getting ready to strike. 
[1201 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

I have tortured him many times with a stick, 
and when at last the head has shot forward, I 
have tried to pull the stick away, but never with 
success. The fangs would strike it with a spite- 
ful little "tick.'* But the road-runner ducks or 
moves to one side with great ease — an ease that 
comes from seeing quickly when the head starts 
to move. He is the brightest-eyed bird on the 
desert, aside from the hawks and vultures. 

Some of the desert insects seem devoid of sight, 
and others, even with pronounced eyes, seem to 
see little. All the scorpions, centipedes, and most 
of the tarantulas have little vision and less imag- 
ination. The tarantula will bite if poked with a 
stick — bite through a switch as large as a lead- 
pencil — but his eyes are poor affairs. Some of the 
spiders are bright enough in eyes, and some of 
the beetles and bugs have enormous telescopic 
eyes, but they are used only at short range. The 
vision is not too comprehensive and calls for much 
adjustment. 

The reptiles, being predatory and living on 
other life, have developed rather keen sight. A 
lizard sitting on a stone seems to see little, but, 
as a matter of fact, he sees everything within 
fifty yards. Sometimes, when curious or aston- 
[121] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

ished, he will stretch his neck to look; at other 
times, when excited, he will bob up and down with 
his body, keeping watch the while; but as soon 
as he thinks things are getting too near for com- 
fort, he will retreat with great expedition. The 
horned toad that lies just under your foot, and 
looks stupid and sleepy, sees you clearly enough; 
but he presumes on his protective coloring and 
oftentimes declines to run. To appreciate his 
sense of sight, one should see him stalk ants and 
small flies. He moves very slowly, crawling al- 
most like a cat, until within firing range. Then 
a long tongue shoots out, too quickly even to be 
seen, and the ant or fly simultaneously disap- 
pears — vanishes from the face of the earth. The 
young horned toads (of a pinkish-coral color and 
not quite so large as a quarter of a dollar) tag 
around after the older ones and learn the fly- 
stalking business very early in life. They are 
experts at it long before they are half-dollar size. 
The bright eye of the snake is proverbial. And 
it always seems open and glittering. That it 
dazzles, fascinates, charms, is an old story for 
which I have never been able to find any con- 
firmation. Birds, with or without young, get 
much excited over a snake and will dance, squawk, 
[122] 



TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 

ruffle their plumage, and appear crippled or help- 
less; but they always manage to keep out of the 
snake's reach. They are caught sometimes un- 
awares, especially near water-holes where they 
come to drink; but they are not charmed in the 
full presence and, through a fatal fascination, un- 
able to escape. 

When you come up with a snake you are almost 
always conscious that he has seen you first. He 
lies there quite still, with his eyes watching your 
every movement. I once came upon a rattler that 
had a live gopher half-way down his throat. The 
gopher's head and shoulders were sticking out 
of the snake's mouth but the rest of him was sub- 
merged. He had given up and was no longer 
struggling. Both his eyes and those of the snake 
were fixed full upon me when I first saw them. 
I stood by for half an hour without impeding the 
slipping process, until the gopher's head had al- 
most disappeared. Then I interfered with a blow 
of my walking-stick. Both the snake and the 
gopher jumped under the blow and their eyes 
bulged. I squeezed the gopher out of the snake's 
mouth, and, after half an hour of tumbling about 
in the sand like a drunken man, he crawled off, 
apparently not much the worse for his experience. 
[123] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

I had always thought the range of a snake's 
vision was a matter of, say, ten or twelve feet until 
one day I saw a rattler crawling along under the 
brow of a hill, and, from his observations at stated 
periods, evidently somewhat interested in some- 
thing just over the hill. I backed away and came 
up at another angle of vision to find a flock of 
very young quail some twenty or thirty yards 
in front of the snake, I watched him trying to 
stalk those quail for half an hour. He had no 
cover to hide behind and at last he came so close 
to the quail in the open that the old one called 
them, and they hurried away. 

That was a great surprise to me, for I had no 
idea that a snake could either hear or smell, and 
his eyes I believed to be useful only at short range. 
But nature and her creations are always offering 
strange surprises. As soon as we are sure of some- 
thing that never, never happens, lo, it comes off 
under our very nose in the most commonplace, 
matter-of-fact way. 



[124] 



CHAPTER VII 
MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 

There are high places, ledges, and escarpments 
in the desert mountains where a horse cannot 
carry you and your heavy boots may imperil 
you, but these are playgrounds to the man with 
moccasined feet. He moves about on ledges 
with confidence and drops from terrace to terrace 
down an escarpment with the greatest ease. But 
he should always look before he drops and find 
out just what he is to fall upon. 

I learned this with some heart-throbs one day 
when figuring casually upon swinging down over 
a ten-foot ledge to a rocky terrace below. I 
thought I would have a second look, just to see 
how high the ledge was and just the quality of 
the rock upon which I was to alight, when, lo 
and behold, there, curled up on my landing-place, 
was a charming red-brown rattler. I should have 
landed upon him very beautifully no doubt, but 
how should I have gotten away from him ? 

The snake seems always more at home on the 
rock ledges of the mountains than elsewhere. 
[125] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

And he seems to prefer the higher ledges of the 
ranges, especially during the summer months. 
Some twenty or more years ago, when a flume 
was being built to take out the waters of the 
Kaweah to make electricity for Visalia and other 
towns in California, it was found necessary to 
carry the flume far along a mountainside some 
eight hundred feet above the valley. Much pick- 
ing and blasting of rock was done, and the net 
result in snakes was about ten rattlers a day. 
In the valleys and along the Kaweah, where I 
was fishing, I found not a snake a week. During 
the winter the rattlers hibernate in the rock crev- 
ices or small caves of the mountains, sometimes 
in bunches that are twisted and wound together 
until they look like the mesh of knotted rope used 
on tugboats to ward off pressure from docks or 
other boats. In their winter quarters, in a bunch, 
they are very sluggish. A pounding with the butt 
end of a rifle causes a shrugging and shrinking 
but not an attack. 

One is always more or less astonished at the 
inaccessible places in the mountains — the shelves 
and rock points — chosen by a rattlesnake for a 
summer resting-place or a hunting-ground. At 
the Grand Canyon I tramped the Tusayan Forest 
[126] 



MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 

all one summer, over a fifty-mile range, without 
discovering a single rattler; but under the Rim, 
along shallow rock shelves, on rocky promontories 
where I had difficulty in climbing, there I found 
the snake very much at home. One day I crept 
along a narrow ledge two hundred feet under the 
Rim and, not without some peril, finally came 
out just below an Indian cache that I had noticed 
from above. For days I had been speculating 
over it and wondering how the Indians got to 
it. When, at last, I reached it I found it was a 
stone and mud-mortar affair about four feet 
square, built on a thin shelf under an overhang- 
ing rock. The Indians must have reached it with 
ropes or ladders from above, for from below the 
shelf presented ten feet of abrupt rock wall. 

By much manoeuvring with my alpenstock I 
finally got my hands on the edge of the shelf, 
drew myself up, and swung around to a sitting 
position. As I did so I was amazed to see a large 
rattler coiled on the shelf within a few feet of me. 
He was bright-eyed, alert, and alarmed, for he 
began to rattle. I could not imagine how he ever 
got there unless he dropped from above, which 
seemed an impossibility. That he came from 
below, wriggling up a steep face-wall, was equally 
[127] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

impossible. A salmon will run up a waterfall 
with the aid of the water and a strong tail, but 
the snake had neither the water nor the fish-tail. 
He might have been there for a long time but 
that would not in any way explain how he came 
there originally. I dare say he had abandoned 
hope of getting down, but I eased his mind by 
helping him down rather abruptly. 

In the San Bernardino Range (it separates the 
Colorado Desert from the Mohave) I had a rest- 
ing-place on a high saddle between two valleys. 
It was merely a flat rock upon which I was ac- 
customed to stretch out on my back and lie stilly 
watching the vultures swing up and over and 
into the opposite valley. It was an isolated rock 
about ten feet long, and I never for a moment 
questioned its safety as a resting-place. I had 
gone to sleep there in the sun many times quite 
unsuspicious of danger; but one day I awoke 
rather suddenly. My dog had been sniffing about 
the ground-line of the rock just under my elbow. 
All at once he sprang back with a snap of his teeth 
and a growl. His action was followed by the buzz 
of a rattlesnake. Then I did some springing back. 
I split a stick and wormed the snake out of his 
retreat under the rock, and then began poking 
[128] 



MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 

around the opposite side for more snakes. I dug 
out three fat tarantulas and a scorpion. After 
that I took my midday siesta elsewhere. 

That experience was rather unusual as regards 
the smaller game. The tarantula takes kindly to 
sand-banks, the trap-door spider to flat ground, 
the scorpion to dead wood or other protecting 
cover; but none of them cares much about the 
mountains. The warm desert valleys are their 
preference. All life decreases as you ascend, and 
in the mountains, high up on the bare tops or 
in the chaparral, there is only an occasional sheep, 
a bear, a deer, a jay, and a quail. Hunting or 
trailing up there is difficult. The only footways 
through the chaparral are ones that are perhaps 
made by various animals pushing the growths 
aside and forming a half-blind trail. Sometimes 
along such a trail one will see in the dust the feet 
of quail, the hoofs of deer, and the pads of wolves, 
but it is quite useless to follow them. Stalking in 
that jungle is impossible. The only way to thread 
it, aside from the animal runway, is on your hands 
and knees; and the best thing to do with it is 
to let it alone. 

In the spring of the year this chaparral is often 
very beautiful with blossoms of buckthorn, wild 
[129] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

cherry, white lilac, manzanita, and wild mahog- 
any, while the valleys below are blue and pink 
with alfilaria or bright with violets that are not 
violet-hued but golden. The endless variety of 
flowers on the desert after the winter rains has 
exhausted the adjectives of many a writer. I 
never thought to describe the red and blue and 
gold and white of them. It was sufficient for me 
to see them, to stop and linger over them, and 
to love their beauty. It was not the rambling 
strontium, or the brilliant flowers of the various 
cacti, or the great cream-colored bells of the yucca 
that made the strongest appeal, but the small 
baby blue-eye, or the yellow mimulus, or high up 
on the face-wall of a mountain, rooted in a crack 
of the rock, some pale-pink flower on a long thin 
stem that waved and rolled in the breeze, and 
fought ofl^ heat and drought for the joy of living 
and the urge to bring forth after its kind. 

Ah ! how very charming those pale beauties 
that blush unseen, living and dying unknown 
and unnoticed that the species may not perish 
from the face of the earth! They waste little 
sweetness on the desert air, for wild flowers are 
generally scentless, nor do they waste any beauty, 
for beauty is its own excuse for being; but they 
[130] 



MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 

are so isolated, so lonely, so forsaken of their kind 
that one sighs over them and, perhaps, indulges in 
pathetic fallacies regarding them. Flowers on 
the desert ! They are more splendid than shin- 
ing gold or glittering diamonds. 

For several days on the Silver Valley Ranch in 
the Mohave Desert, with John Muir, I kept bother- 
ing him with questions about flower and weed and 
shrub. What was the name of this or the variety 
of that ? Learned botanist that he was, his usual 
answer was: **I don't know.'* The desert growths 
puzzled him and some of them were wholly in- 
comprehensible to him. He was not afraid to 
say, "I don't know," because there were so many 
things he did know. When Muir gave it up, no 
one else ventured a further guess. In Sonora, 
Sinoloa, and Chihuahua I asked the Indians and 
the peons the same question, over and over again. 
"How do you name that flower?" or "What is 
that tree?" The answer was usually ''No se." 
Sometimes they gave me a local name that meant 
nothing. I had to christen the flowers and shrubs 
with names of my own or (as more often hap- 
pened) let them go unnamed. Doctor MacDougal 
has done much to straighten out the botany of 
our deserts, but there is still a terra incognita there. 
[131] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

On the desert one is always pausing to wonder 
over some detail of plant or insect or reptile, 
stooping to examine some vein of rock or flow 
of lava or spill of small carnelians beaten into a 
floor. The part attracts one, piques curiosity; 
and yet it is not nearly so wonderful as the whole 
— the complete unity of the desert under almost 
any light. The golden-crimson dawns, the fiery 
sunsets, seem to attune the desert and put all 
its elements into complete accord; but it also 
goes together as a piece from dawn to dusk with 
a different light and a different tone of color 
for every hour. The lilac, the rose, the golden 
envelope of air are in effect so many colored 
glasses through which we see the world. The 
mountains, mesas, and basins are all tinged by 
the prevailing hue or tint, and even the blue of 
the sky is tempered by it. The result is a color- 
unity in landscape the most astonishing ever 
seen. It is possibly this exact unity of tone that 
baflles the landscape-painter who would put the 
desert on canvas. Many have tried and very few 
have succeeded. 

Up at the Grand Canyon the blend is less sub- 
tle, the variety greater; but here another dif- 
ficulty faces the painter. He is baffled by the 
[132] 



MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 

scale — the huge proportions, the immensity of 
things. The picture, instead of being picturesque, 
is enormously panoramic, scenic, topographic. In 
the high thin air the light is sharp, the color 
brilliant, the shadows deep blue. Distance runs 
out endlessly, perspective flattens, planes collapse, 
promontories and valleys cut off the foreground 
and middle distance, clouds and thunder-heads 
loom in the background. In its way it is quite 
as impossible to paint as the desert. But its de- 
tail is just as interesting to study. The geology 
is marvellous, the local coloring wonderful, the 
plant life beautiful. 

You will never see elsewhere such beauty in 
the wild flowers as here. The long-stemmed, 
pale-hued growths that root in the fissures of 
broken standstone, and fight for soil and water, 
are the most graceful, dainty, and romantic of 
plants. They nod and bend in the wind, waving 
softly but securely over some precipice, with no 
thought of anything but fulfilling their mission 
on earth and perpetuating their kind; but they 
are apparently contented, happy, serene, at peace. 
Under the Kaibab wall, on the south side of the 
Canyon, are small groves of Douglas spruce that 
flourish only under the protection of the Rim. 
[133] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

Again how serenely and peacefully they seem to 
live ! They hardly ever stir; but their arrow- 
headed tops lift up to the sun, their feathery 
sprays glisten, their splendid green shows joy in 
life. There they stand together in groves that 
apparently live on forever, the new taking the 
place of the old, the beauty of the whole being 
renewed continuously in the part. 

Not the least of nature's wonders are her trees. 
At the Canyon the growths are not vigorous be- 
cause the soil is thin, the rock close to the sur- 
face, the rain supply uncertain. The Arizona 
or Western pine that makes up the bulk of the 
Tusayan Forest, the pinyon, the cedar, the spruce, 
are none of them prodigal in growth. Not so 
with the California redwoods that grow on the 
mountain slopes of the Sierra. As every one 
knows the giant Sequoia is not only the largest 
of all trees but it is the oldest. Muir told me that 
he had counted the rings of some of the fallen, 
and had made out that there were trees in the 
California groves at least four thousand years old. 
He added that, barring accidents, there was no 
reason why the Sequoia should not live forever.* 

* The species has lived a very long time, for its remains are found 
among the deposits of the Tertiary Period. 

[ 134 1 



MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 

He meant by that that the tree suffered from 
no blight or insect or disease. It is a cedar, and 
perhaps its pungent odor keeps off the borers 
and sappers. The trees come to violent ends 
rather than slow decay. Of these, fire is the worst. 
Lightning destroys the top, and winds twist off 
the enormous arms so that all the lower half of 
the trunk is branchless, but the tree always makes 
a stout resistance and tries to repair the damage 
by throwing out new branches and new sprays. 
All the larger trees of the redwood groves show 
the scars of wind and lightning in their tops, but 
they hold fast and live into the centuries and 
shoot up new leaders to the sky. They are the 
most wonderful trees in the world. 

One never comes to know the redwoods until 
he sleeps under them, and wakes in the morning 
to lie for a long time looking up their cinnamon- 
red trunks into the green foliage of their tops. 
The bark is deeply indented, sometimes two feet 
deep, and these indentations appear like the flut- 
ings of an enormous Corinthian column. The 
illusion is in measure helped out by the swell-out 
of the trunk at the base where the great roots go 
down into the earth and the spread-out of the 
branches at the top into an efflorescent capital. 
[135] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

After a week a sense of the bigness of the red- 
woods begins to dawn upon one. And their ar- 
rowy majesty and mighty lift are more compre- 
hensible. How straight and strong and splendid 
they are ! People, with a genius for seeing the 
infinitely little, camp under these great trees, and 
in the morning perhaps are amused by the antics 
of the Douglas squirrel (a Western red squirrel) 
chasing himself around the thirty-foot trunk; 
but they do not see the tree. They gaze beyond 
the three-hundred-foot top into the sky, watching 
the wheel of a hawk or a vulture, but they do 
not see the sky. The story goes of some dullard 
presented to a great queen at one of her recep- 
tions, and the only thing he saw about her maj- 
esty was the wart on her nose. But how can 
one miss the majesty of these mighty trees ! They 
belong with the Grand Canyon and Kanchanjanga 
— among the sublime wonders of the world. 

Under the redwoods the ground is covered with 
heavy mosses or beds of ferns or spongy deposits 
of century-old foliage, or perhaps huge rocks. 
There, too, you will see pale wild roses in clumps 
— the fairest-petalled beauties ever seen in or out 
of the forests — and underneath, all around them, 
sometimes covering acres of ground, are small 
[136] 



MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 

nodding violets, with countless other cups and 
stars and hoods and slippers, without a name and 
without a scent, but, nevertheless, charming in 
color and lovely in form. It is a pleasant place 
to ramble afoot, and you can ride there, too; but 
it is inadvisable if you wish to see the trees above 
or the flowers below. As for a camping-ground, 
it is the only one in a forest that I ever relished. 

Bears ! Oh^ yes, there were bears there twenty- 
five years ago but they never harmed any one 
then, and now there are so few left that even a 
foolish horse will graze at night in a mountain 
meadow with no winding up of the picket-rope. 
Old Ephraim the Grizzly is quite extinct and 
Bruin the Black hides in the densest portion of 
the Sierra, where you with your horse will never 
go. If you see the pancake-like foot of Bruin in 
the mud near a spring, you need not jump. It 
is the boot-heel of Brown, your fellow man, near 
it that should cause you fear. Brown's auto- 
mobile killed eight hundred people in New York 
City alone last year, and the Bruin family never 
killed that many people in all history, except as 
the Browns shot them and they defended them- 
selves. 

The forests of California, almost all of them, 
[137] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

open out at intervals into sunlit spaces where the 
trees give way to meadows spattered thick with 
flowers and waving free with grasses. Again you 
can ride, if you care nothing about the things you 
are riding over; but if you have a tithe of John 
Muir's love for the slopes of the Sierras, you will 
get down and lead your horse. The mountain 
meadows of California are places where one can 
drop into sentiment, lose one's self for a moment 
in the beauty of creation, grow emotional over 
the purity of petal and leaf, sunlight and shade, 
curve and color and blended blue. 

Unfortunately, these wonderful places are now 
being desecrated, if not destroyed, by the auto- 
mobilist — the same genius that has invaded the 
Yosemite and made that beautiful spot almost 
a byword and a cursing. No landscape can stand 
up against the tramp automobile that dispenses 
old newspapers, empty cans and bottles, with 
fire and destruction, in its wake. The crew of 
that craft burn the timber and grasses, muddy up 
the streams and kill the trout, tear up the flowers, 
and paint their names on the face-walls of the 
mountains. They are worse than the plagues of 
Egypt because their destruction is mere wanton- 
ness. 

[138] 



MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 

The farther north you go on the Pacific coast 
the less desirable becomes the camping. The 
timber gets denser, the ground much wetter, 
the going, either asaddle or afoot, much harder. 
When you get into Alaska, or even British Co- 
lumbia, the undergrowth becomes very thick 
(you sometimes have to cut your way with an 
axe), the dews are drenching, the mosquitoes and 
flies are deadly in their persistent punch. You 
need a screened tent with an elevated water-tight 
floor. With these features comes that omnipres- 
ent consciousness of being shut in and away from 
the sunlight and the sky. 

Even in the magnificent pine forests of Oregon 
— the Siskiyou region, for example — there is the 
feeling of miles upon miles of arrowy stems reach- 
ing up to the sky. For a hundred feet in height 
the trunks stand branchless, sprayless, coneless; 
then they begin to feather out wherever a ray of 
sunlight invites them. They crowd so closely, they 
spread so densely, that finally they shut out the 
light of the sun. For hundreds of years they stand 
in dark ranks swaying gracefully and rocking per- 
haps a little in storms. Usually they are motion- 
less. The snow of winter falls on their tops and 
sifts through their needles to the ground, or the 
[139] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

rains of summer trickle and drip and slip to earth 
from their sprays, but the great trees stand un- 
moved, cold, silent, forbidding. Around their 
roots are the mosses of centuries, and springing 
out of them are flowers great and small. I have 
never seen elsewhere so many small nameless 
flowers, lying in such vast beds, and carpeting the 
earth as with some precious Persian tapestry. 
Over these low-lying petals are berry-bushes, 
syringas, purple clematis, great rhododendrons 
fifteen feet high, with flowers a foot in diameter. 
There never was a more fertile jungle than the 
Siskiyou. 

But not a place for riding and not too good a 
place for walking. The ground is cumbered with 
decayed timber and mosses. In the great slashes 
through the forest, called "windfalls** and 
"burns," where tornadoes and fire have played 
havoc, you cannot go at all unless you can walk 
dead tree-trunks that lie criss-crossed on the 
ground, sometimes a half-dozen layers one upon 
another, and the topmost, where you walk, per- 
haps twenty-five feet in the air. You need all 
the feel and grip of your feet in walking those 
thin pine trunks that sway under your weight like 
a tight-rope. Elsewhere in the forest with your 
[140] 



MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 

feet on the ground you will find the going is not 
too easy. Berry-bushes, deviPs-clubs, enormous 
ferns cling to you and trip you up; the steep 
escarpments and enormous slides throw you down. 
By the end of the day if you can creep into some 
half-opening in the forest and strike a camp you 
are fortunate. More often you build a fire under 
a rotten stump and spend the evening with the 
ghostly ranks of pines about you. 

This is decidedly lonesome. Night in the forest, 
with no sky or stars or wind or sound, is not to 
the average liking. One loses his sense of direc- 
tion after he has turned about in camp a few 
times. And he never has any feeling of security. 
One does not worry about snakes, for there are 
few of them, nor over bears, though there may 
be many of them, nor over panthers or cougars, 
though they occasionally are in evidence; but 
he somehow feels that the animals have the ad- 
vantage of him and can stalk him in his little 
camp as he in turn perhaps has stalked them in 
their various covers. The mere idea that the 
animals of the forest are looking him over as he 
sits by his camp-fire, or sniffing at him on the 
tainted wind, rather irritates him. Perhaps when 
he hears the dull. break of a dead branch in the 
[141] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

moss and looks that way to see a pair of eyeballs 
shining like the lamps of a miniature automobile, 
he raises his gun and fires. There is a rustling 
and thrashing and kicking in the brush, and the 
next morning when he goes out to look up that 
dead panther he finds only a poor doe or a half- 
grown fawn whose curiosity led it to the light 
and caused its death. 

Well, at any rate, it was the snarl of a panther 
that was heard earlier in the evening, and that 
long-drawn bay in the late afternoon was a tim- 
ber-wolf. One should take no chances with glit- 
tering eyeballs. They are dangerous even in the 
head of a deer — that is, to the deer. 



[142] 



CHAPTER VIII 
CANOE AND PADDLE 

The paddle — the thin whitewood paddle of the 
Sioux — came to my hands rather early in life. 
Minnesota was the first Western health resort to 
which Eastern physicians began sending patients, 
and thither in 1868 my family went for the bene- 
fit of the health of an older brother. I was taken 
along, probably because the family knew no way 
of leaving me behind. 

Minnesota was at that time something of a 
wild country. The Milwaukee and St. Paul road 
had not been built, travel was by flat-bottomed 
steamers on the Mississippi, and towns were few 
and sparsely settled. We stopped in the Missis- 
sippi Valley at a town almost opposite the mouth 
of the Chippewa River, and from there during 
the next half-dozen years I made many excur- 
sions. They seemed not very unusual or remark- 
able events then, but to-day they sound a little 
prehistoric owing to the many swift changes that 
have taken place in that northwestern country. 

The river-basin and the Minnesota country 
[143} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

held plenty of Sioux at that time (it was only 
four or ^VQ years after the great Sioux massacre 
led by Little Crow) and there was no difficulty 
in a boy making acquaintance with Indian boys 
and seeing the redskin on his native heath. I 
was taken into the tepees at once — my first en- 
trance being at the invitation of an Indian boy 
who led me into his family tepee and sat me down 
on a pile of unskinned, half-decayed, and very 
odoriferous muskrats. When I discovered by the 
smell what I was seated upon, there was a strange 
chuckle went up from my companion and two 
fat old squaws, one of them his mother. That 
was the Indian idea of something funny. 

Before that introduction I possessed a working 
knowledge of muskrats. In fact, my first glimpse 
of Indians was one day when I saw a canoe com- 
ing across the Mississippi headed for my side of 
the river. Of course I went down to the water's 
edge to meet that canoe. Two Indians were 
seated flat in the bottom of it, and around them, 
even over their legs and high up on their waists, 
almost ,to the top of the canoe, were heaped dead 
muskrats and beavers. What a sight for an 
Eastern-bred boy! I had never seen anything 
like it. 

[144] 



CANOE AND PADDLE 

That was also my first sight of a dugout canoe. 
It had never occurred to me at that time that 
Indians could go about in anything less poetic 
than a cream-white birch-bark canoe with curv- 
ing bow and stern. The romance of the redskin 
was still with me, though I had already been 
stripped of the delusion that he always wore 
feathers in his hair and paint upon his face. From 
engravings in books I had gathered that he even 
went to sleep in a war-bonnet, but I soon learned 
that feathers and paint were put on only in times 
of war or ceremonial dances. The Minnesota 
Sioux in 1868 were still wearing, to some extent, 
buckskin shirts, leggings, and moccasins; but the 
squaws were, even then, taking kindly to pale- 
face calicoes; and the big chiefs, when they got 
government money for lands, occasionally bought 
silk hats and black broadcloth suits, which they 
wore with no vestige of shirt or collar. The rank 
and file were far less magnificently garbed. Those 
who hung about the small towns took up with the 
cast-ofF wearing- apparel of the poor whites, ex- 
cept for moccasins; and those who still lived in 
tepees retained much of the old tribal costume. 

But to return to the canoe. The birch-bark 
in 1868 was still used on the rivers and lakes of 
[145] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

the Northwest, but I always fancied the Indians 
disliked it. When I came to use it I found it, 
almost at the start, a picturesque swindle. Its 
only virtue was its lightness, and that was, at the 
same time, its chief defect. It sat high out of 
the water like an egg-shell, and the winds would 
blow it about with maddening persistence. In 
crossing a lake, for instance, the bow would be 
caught by every gust of wind and the canoe 
swung out of direction. And the drift with the 
wind always had to be made up by hard pad- 
dling. When the birch-bark was heavily loaded 
and rode low in the water, it travelled better, 
but it lost headway the moment the paddling 
ceased. Its light weight lent it no impetus or 
carrying power. 

In addition, it was a frail craft. It was made 
of slight bark material, with knees bent from split 
saplings, and supposedly made water-tight with 
pine pitch. But it never was wholly water-tight 
and the paddler almost always sat or knelt in a 
puddle at the bottom of the canoe. If it started 
out in life water-tight, it soon got snagged on a 
sunken log, and after the first hole was punched 
in it, there was never a complete recovery to nor- 
mal. Its lightness made it portable from lake to 
[146] 



CANOE AND PADDLE 

lake, but it could not stand much rough handling 
without breaking. Even in grounding on sand or 
mud banks, in getting in and out of it, or carry- 
ing heavy loads, there was the fear of strain and 
wrench on its structure. It was never heavy 
enough for a working craft. 

As for a hunting canoe, the birch-bark was prob- 
ably the very worst imaginable. The high prow 
would catch ripples under the forefoot and make 
a beating noise. If there was a broadside wind, 
the waves would reverberate with a drum sound 
from the ribs. Sneaking on ducks, geese, or deer 
was well-nigh impossible with it. And, again, in 
working through sloughs lined with flags and 
reeds, or across lakes filled with tall stalks of wild 
rice, the edge of the canoe would rub and cry 
and sing all sorts of notes. The hollow craft would 
respond Hke a horse-fiddle, and the paddler in 
turn would indulge in curses, not loud but deep, 
as flock after flock of wood-ducks or mallards got 
up, just out of gunshot, and splattered up and 
away across the lake. The birch-bark never was 
a success except as a poetic adjunct to fiction. 
It dropped out of my experience almost as quickly 
as it dropped in. 

The Sioux substitute for the birch-bark was the 
[147] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

dugout. Full-blood and half-breed and early- 
settler all used the dugout. It was cheap, easily 
made, and serviceable. A pine log, an axe, a 
fire, some slight ingenuity mixed with labor, were 
all that was necessary to its making. The model 
of the dugout was the birch-bark, but, instead of 
being stitched together and chinked with pitch, it 
was simply hollowed out of a solid log, smoothed 
and rounded and brought to a high cutwater 
edge at bow and stern. When made it was sub- 
stantial and had all of the qualities which the 
birch-bark lacked. It rode low in the water, made 
no reverberating sound from waves, pushed 
through reeds and rice with no scratching, held 
its headway, and was water-tight. 

But more than any other canoe was it cranky. 
It rolled over almost as easily as the log from 
which it was made — that is, with the nouveau. 
Those who had grown accustomed to it stood up 
in it, jumped in or out of it, shot from it. Like 
riding a bucking horse, it was largely a matter of 
confidence. As a boy I quickly grew used to it, 
hunted and fished in it, swam with it, dragged it 
up on the shore, turned it upside down, and slept 
under it. I know not how many hundreds of 
miles I may have gone in it, through rivers, 
sloughs, and lakes, while still a boy. 
[148] 



CANOE AND PADDLE 

My first dugout I got from an Indian for the 
reasonable sum of two dollars. It was only twelve 
feet in length and was guiltless of paint, rope, 
chain, or name. Naturally, I gave it an imme- 
diate coat of pale pink with red trimmings, and at 
the bow, in brilliant orange, I lettered the name 
''Logan." Having thus given vent to beauty and 
romance, I chained the canoe to a wild plum-tree 
near the water's edge with the idea of allowing it 
to dry out. Two rivermen chanced along that 
way in my absence, and, discovering that there 
were ripe plums on the tree, sat down in the shade, 
ate the plums, and unsympathetically pelted the 
wet canoe and *' Logan" with the rejected skins. 
It was a sorry sight when I came upon it some 
hours later. I got out my wrath and went after 
those rivermen, but the trail took to water, and 
I never caught up with them. Being greatly 
grieved over the wreck of my color-scheme, I re- 
painted the whole canoe a lead tone, probably in 
token of mourning. That chanced to be a very 
good hunting color, and much good hunting came 
to me in that revised dugout. 

And some perils also. The first one came in 
the early spring, with the Mississippi swollen a 
mile wide and running swift with fields of jos- 
tling ice coming out of Lake Pepin. A boy friend 
[149] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

and myself had been up in the Wisconsin bot- 
toms shooting ducks and were returning home in 
the little dugout, feeling our way through the ice 
in crossing the river. About half-way over, a loon 
came flying by the canoe. My companion caught 
up my heavy duck gun and, before I could stop 
him, shot at the loon broadside from the canoe. 
The inevitable happened. The heavily loaded 
gun kicked him against the side of the canoe, and 
in a second it had rolled over and we were in the 
icy water. 

I remember it was very cold spring weather 
and I was heavily dressed, wearing a buckskin 
coat, the pockets of which were loaded with am- 
munition. In addition, I had on rubber wading- 
boots that came up and buckled around my waist. 
When I went into the water it seemed as though 
I could never stop myself from going down, so 
heavily was I weighted. When at last I turned 
under water and began to come up, it seemed 
many minutes before I reached the surface. Even 
then it was not the open surface, for I came up 
under a piece of ice. Horror seized me, for I feared 
that perhaps it was one of the huge half-acre 
floes, and that I would swim far under it instead 
of out from it. I opened my eyes to catch the 
[150] 



CANOE AND PADDLE 

direction of the lightest water and pushed on the 
jfloe with my hands and head. It gave way, being 
little larger than a barrel-head. 

I got to the dugout, where I found my com- 
panion lying across the upturned bottom. After 
some persuasion, he helped me right it and bail 
out some of the water, after which I swam to the 
stern, put my hands on either side and tried to 
lift myself through my hands into the canoe. I 
succeeded merely in sinking the canoe into the 
water. I was too heavy with my wet clothes for 
so small a craft. We then tried to push it through 
the water, but the interference of ice gave us no 
encouragement. In half an hour we had grown 
very numb and had not gone fifty yards. Either 
shore was half a mile away, the water was very 
deep, very rapid, and oh, how cold! It then 
looked as though two boys were booked for 
Davy's Locker. 

No use to call. There was no one to hear, no 
one in sight, nothing human anywhere. We clung 
to the canoe for another half-hour, and then I 
noticed far down the river two black stick-like 
objects and from them proceeded some smoke. 
I knew it was a small river-steamer working up 
through the ice to gain a prize for the first boat 
[151] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

to open spring navigation through Lake Pepin. 
We waited some more, drifted a mile or more, 
froze some more. Then we began to yell. The 
north wind carried our voices. The captain on 
the hurricane-deck heard us, and immediately 
after we heard him coming into action with a 
volley of oaths at the deck-hands. A boat came 
down from the davits with a smash on the water 
that threatened its existence. They picked us 
up — two very cold and nearly collapsed boys — 
took us to the steamer, stowed us under the big 
boilers, where we got baked back to life, and finally 
launched us again in our canoe. I remember when 
I got home that my dear mother asked me if I 
had not thanked God for saving my life, to which, 
boy-like, I answered that I had not, but that I 
had thanked the steamboat captain. It was 
years before that remark ceased to be flung at 
me by the family. 

I learned by that early river adventure to tie 
my gun to the canoe in crossing deep water. I 
had lost an exceptionally good duck gun. It 
went to the bottom in forty feet of water while 
the things we cared little about, the dead ducks, 
floated about us in pleasant mockery of our plight. 
Some other things also were learned, namely: 
[152} 



CANOE AND PADDLE 

do no shooting broadside out of a small canoe; 
do not fancy you can perform, heavily clad and 
in ice-water, the same feats of climbing in and 
out of a canoe that you did in summer weather 
in your bare skin; do not be too sure of some one 
at hand to rescue you. 

But there were always new things to learn and 
new accidents to happen. Only a few months 
later that same companion, with obstinate per- 
severance in setting his gun-hammers down on 
the caps and then allowing the gun to rattle about 
in the bottom of the dugout, shot a hole through 
the bow below the water-line. We crept back 
into the stern, thus lifting the bow out of the 
water, and in that way paddled ashore. The 
canoe was patched up and a few weeks later came 
near drowning us under a raft. Then a half- 
breed cast a covetous eye upon it and paddled it 
away. It came back through some vigorous per- 
suasion, and was duly chained to the plum-tree. 
After that it seemed to resign itself to service and 
ran on for several years without incident or acci- 
dent. 

Canoeing in those days was hardly the canvas 
canoeing of the present time. There were no 
seats in the dugout. The paddler sat flat down 
[153] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

on the bottom to keep out of sight of game and 
out of the wind. He paddled with a thin but 
broad-bladed paddle and a long handle. If sneak- 
ing on game, he never lifted the paddle out of the 
water. He brought it forward through the water, 
edge first, so that it cut without rippling. The 
back-stroke was made with a flirt out at the side 
of the broad blade which kept the canoe headed 
straight. When not sneaking or moving care- 
fully on game the paddle was often shifted from 
one side of the canoe to the other, especially if 
there were heavy winds — the blade being feath- 
ered as it came up into the wind. 

In going through shallow narrow sloughs the 
paddle was used to push on the ground, and much 
fine still-hunting was done in that way. Off from 
the sloughs (the creeks of the so-called river-bot- 
toms) were small pockets or little bayous, dense 
with tall stalks of wild rice, in which ducks would 
gather by the scores. Sometimes we could push 
the canoe within ten yards of them before we were 
either seen or heard. Then they took to wing 
with a great splash and beat, and we shot at them 
as they rose. Often, again, we were able to steal 
on beaver or mink with a noiseless paddle, even 
in full daylight, by keeping in the shadow of heavy 
[154] 



CANOE AND PADDLE 

mud-banks; and at night, when spearing fish by- 
torchlight, we could drive the dugout almost 
within touching distance of a dazzled fawn be- 
fore it would jump. 

The chief use of the canoe was in hunting ducks 
and geese. In the early afternoon, almost to the 
sunset hour, we slipped along the sloughs shoot- 
ing wood-duck, teal, and mallards as they rose 
from the pockets. The dog, lying flat in the bot- 
tom of the canoe, would whimper and shiver with 
excitement over this, and occasionally would 
plunge overboard after a broken-winged duck, and 
take his beating afterward with becoming com- 
placency. There were mitigating circumstances 
in his case. The game was close to view, and when 
it rose there was such a startling whifF of wings 
and splash of water that we were not less excited 
than the dog. It was the golden period of water- 
fowl shooting in America, and we were in the 
midst of it. 

Before sundown we left the sloughs and took 
up position on the edge of some huge wild-rice 
lake where the ducks and geese came in on their 
evening flight. The procession began arriving 
sometimes an hour before sunset and lasted until 
after dark. We shot until we could no longer see 
[155] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

the flocks outlined against the night sky. And 
still they came, rank after rank, flock after flock, 
whirling, beating, gliding, settling into the centre 
of the lake. 

The early-comers were the wood-duck, flying 
rather low, and in flocks of a dozen or more. They 
were bred in the Mississippi bottoms, and the 
young ones were moving about in flocks before 
the first of September, feeding in the pockets of 
the sloughs in the daytime, and dropping into the 
big lakes for protection at night. They flew quite 
rapidly and just a little carelessly. They seemed 
more wary when younger and with unfeathered 
wings they dove in the water or hid in the long 
grass; but when they began to fly they thought 
themselves quite immune from danger. The re- 
sult was that the hawks often caught them. 
Ducks have a foolish way of circling a lake again 
and again, looking for a right spot to alight. The 
wood-duck has this habit more than any other. 
The hawks took advantage of that movement, 
and often dashed into a flock at a tangent of the 
circle. More than once have I seen a hawk seize 
a duck in mid-air, at a turning of the flock, and 
bear his victim away with the greatest ease and 
deliberation. And the wheeling process also 
[156] 



CANOE AND PADDLE 

brought the ducks within the range of the guns. 
There would be a puff of smoke, a report, and a 
leader would perhaps let go his hold on the air 
and collapse in a crumpled heap on the surface 
of the lake, where the dog would find him. The 
wood-duck were the most foolish of the flight. 

Below the wood-duck, often just over the 
plumes of the wild rice, came the blue-and-green- 
winged teal. They came close but they came 
like bullets, and it required quick snap-shooting 
to stop them. We could often see their very eye- 
balls, so close they were, and then miss them com- 
pletely. While reloading (those were the days of 
the muzzle-loader), a new flock would show us 
new eyeballs and also their disappearing gray 
backs before we could get caps on our guns. The 
teal were always swift fliers, with the ability to 
change both their mind and their direction in a 
flash of time, wheeling and swinging up into the 
air, or round a point of land, or into a pocket 
with the greatest grace and dexterity. 

For dash the green-winged teal always seemed 
to me a kind of enlarged humming-bird among 
the duck family. All sportsmen love their alert- 
ness and sense of life — so much so, that I have 
met those who would not shoot them. Once, 
[137] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

seated on the bank of a slough, a small bunch of 
five came whizzing by me just a foot or so above 
the water. They had gotten a little past me and 
were bunched together when I shot. Much to 
my surprise, all five of them dropped into the 
water with the one shot. Of course that, for 
a boy, was a wonderful feat, but I could not 
help feeling a pang of remorse over it. I had 
wiped out a whole little family in a murderous 
fashion. And they were so beautiful, so happy ! 
But with every boy there is a reversion to the 
savage. He gets a sling, a bow and arrow, a gun, 
and begins to kill things. Not until later life 
does he give the gun away and resolve himself 
human. 

Above the wood-duck and teal came the mal- 
lards. They came at the beginning of the migra- 
tory season, making long pauses in the wild-rice 
lakes, and drifting south slowly. The flocks were 
large, and on the evening flights they flew in and 
over the lakes about twenty or thirty yards up 
in the air. You could see the green heads and 
necks of the drakes plainly enough. Their wing- 
ing was heavy though swift — the birds them- 
selves being too large to do any such quick turn- 
ing as the teal or wood-duck. Usually the leader 
[158] 



CANOE AND PADDLE 

was quacking and leading his fellows right up 
to destruction. When shot at, they beat the 
air, rising straight into the sky, exposing their 
rumps to a second shot, and usually with fatal 
result. They were hard birds to knock down if 
you shot at them as they came head on, breast 
on. The trick was to let them pass, then turn 
and shoot them in the back, where the casing 
was not covered with heavy flesh as on the front. 
Then they collapsed and gave the dogs no trouble 
in retrieving them. 

Splendid birds, the mallards ! Fed on wild 
rice, they were (like the teal) so fat that often 
when shot they would strike the water and 
burst open on their breasts. And in those early 
days their numbers were countless. I once saw 
several thousand in a drove, feeding upon acorns 
in the oak openings. An Indian companion and 
myself sneaked upon them over rolling ridges 
until we were within twenty yards of them. Then 
an old drake gave a loud danger quack. All the 
heads came up instantly and at that moment my 
companion fired. It was a cheap, single-barrelled, 
pot-metal gun, but that one shot killed eighteen 
mallards. 

Still higher in the air than the mallards flew 
[139} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

the spoonbills, widgeons, and pintails. They were 
faster fliers than the others and not often shot. 
They seldom made circles around the lakes, 
though they would follow the linked waterways 
like the mallards. Even higher than these were 
the brant — birds that fancied open water and 
were rarely led into a rice lake unless it happened 
to be a very large one. The ingenuity they dis- 
played in keeping themselves out of the game-bag 
was remarkable. They were very cautious about 
crossing necks and points of land and would shy 
at anything resembling a blind. It was seldom 
that we got a chance at them. The last one I 
shot was a lone male. He was going fast, but 
when struck began turning somersaults in the 
air, and ended his career by falling through a 
tree, catching his head in the crotch of a branch, 
and snapping his head off. 

The geese rode the blue even higher than the 
brant. Toward dusk, when looking for a camp- 
ing-place, they dropped down lower in the air, 
and on the evening flight we occasionally got one 
by a long shot. Usually, however, they kept 
aloft, came over a lake far up, and then, if dis- 
posed to take the water, they wound down a spiral 
staircase of the sky directly over the centre of 
[160] 



CANOE AND PADDLE 

the lake. They were much too shrewd to come 
in low down over the edge of the lake, making 
a long slide for water, and giving every gun along 
the slide a chance at them. On the wing they 
were almost always clamoring, and they seemed 
to know that gave notice of their approach. At 
any rate, they made up for it by great wariness 
in flight. Usually they were seen in the spring 
and autumn migrations high up against the blue, 
flying in a wedge formation. They were not often 
shot on these migratory flights, but rather when 
coming and going from their feeding-grounds. 
In the early days on the Mississippi they raided 
the corn-fields, and shooting from behind or from 
within a corn-shock was the usual programme. 
Before the white man came, the Indians hunted 
them in the oak openings where they went for 
acorns, or the prairie pools where they dropped 
down for wild rice. 

We seldom got more than a distant glimpse 
of the swans, and, though we could hear the 
guttural cries of sand-hill cranes somewhere up 
against the blue, it was still more seldom that we 
were able to make them out with our eyes. Oc- 
casionally a lone specimen would drift our way 
and get into the day*s score, but it was mere ac- 

[161] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

cident. We shot ducks and were content. When 
the light died out and we could no longer see to 
shoot, and the water and rice were so dark that 
the dogs could not retrieve, we came together, 
got our wet selves and the wetter dogs into the 
canoe, and started home. Often the nights were 
very chilly and, seated in the canoe, we heaped 
dead ducks about us to keep us warm. The going 
home was tiresome enough without the added 
discomfort of wet, cold clothes. 

Frequently we were eight or ten miles away 
and had to trace our course out to the river 
through the narrow, winding sloughs in the dark- 
ness. There came in our skill of eye and hand 
upon which we prided ourselves. The one at the 
stern who held the controlling paddle was re- 
sponsible for the run. Could he take the canoe 
out to the river without hitting a snag or scrap- 
ing a fallen log or grounding anywhere along the 
route? Could he see in the dark and be sure of 
every stick and stone and log that stuck up out 
of water and menaced him ? It was really aston- 
ishing what runs we came to perform, what skill 
we developed. We thought at the time that no 
Sioux could handle the paddle more cunningly. 

[162] 



CHAPTER IX 
THE RIVER 

It was always more or less romantic and even 
awesome, that paddling through the sloughs by- 
night, under the shadow of enormous elms, with 
occasionally a flash of stars on the dark water 
where the trees opened for a moment to the sky. 
And always the mystery of things half-seen ! 
Forms and shadows and lights were somewhat 
confused and a course was laid more by instinct 
than by sight. 

There was also the mystery of things merely 
heard. A tremendous thrashing of the water 
just a few feet ahead of the canoe. What was it 
— an enormous muskallonge, a frightened beaver, 
or a huge bottom snake? Then a smash and 
plunge in the water, a series of plunges, a jump 
up the bank, and a succession of bumps through 
the bottom timber, growing gradually fainter. 
Was it a deer or a bear or a wild hog ? We were 
gifted with lively imaginations in those days, but 
also some lively things really happened. One 
day while hunting woodcock I stepped on the 
[163] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

fallen trunk of a small sapling, and the trunk 
moved with me so suddenly that I nearly fell 
to the ground. It was a snake. 

At last we came out to the wide, swiftly-flowing 
river — a dark river, even under moonlight, and 
almost black under clouds. But it was a noble 
river — nobler then than now. And much larger. 
The great forests of Minnesota and Wisconsin 
were even then being hit by the axe, but the im- 
pression at first was slight. The heavy snows 
of winter fell and sifted through the pine sprays 
and lodged in the forest depths and were con- 
served there until far along in the spring. Then 
they melted away gradually, with the result that 
a stage of high water was maintained in the Mis- 
sissippi by the feeding streams until far into the 
summer. Now the forests have gone and the 
first few days of spring with a warm sun melt 
the snows quickly and start a freshet. The tribu- 
tary streams soon carry into the river and create 
a great flood that goes down the Mississippi Val- 
ley with destruction in its wake. Then there 
follows a long summer subsidence, with the river 
at its lowest stage. 

It was upon this broad river of the early days 
that we at last emerged with the canoe and set 
[164] 



THE RIVER 

the prow for the opposite shore. How the waters 
seemed to hurry — more so at night than at any- 
other time ! And how the current kept carrying 
the canoe down with it ! It was always a struggle 
with the swift water, always necessary to give a 
back spin with the paddle, to keep the bow 
rightly pointed. How well we knew that current, 
not only from crossing it in a canoe, but from 
swimming in it — swimming the river itself! Al- 
ways the fast-running waters were tugging at 
our arms and legs, trying to turn us over and 
roll us under. And in or out of a canoe how 
quickly the swift waters took advantage of an 
accident ! How remorselessly they dragged under 
and drowned the one that had blundered ! And 
yet how soft, how gentle, the touch as one trailed 
his hand in the water from the side of the canoe ! 
It seemed incapable of harm. Diving into it 
one could slip through its depths like a seal, and 
opening one's eyes down there revealed the most 
lovely tone of green. But it was never to be 
trusted. Even the still depths had their eddies 
and undertows. 

Its greatest menace was in the warm days of 
spring when all the tributaries flowed full and 
fast, and the river-basin, several miles in width, 
[165} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

was inundated with coffee-colored water. The 
banks were overflowed, the whilom sloughs and 
waterways through the bottoms disappeared, and 
the canoe ran free from bluff to bluff. Logs, tim- 
ber, uprooted trees, driftwood, grass, leaves — all 
the flotsam and jetsam of the river-valley, includ- 
ing an occasional boat or house or haystack of 
humanity — went hurrying downward with the 
flood. The canoe picked its way through a wild 
confusion of drifting objects. And the water 
surface itself was madly surging. Everywhere 
the surface was broken by geyser-like boilings up- 
ward from below, that lifted and fell and spread 
in great circles. And occasionally there were 
whirling, suction or pressure eddies that swung 
the bow of the canoe around in spite of a strong 
hand at the paddle. 

What might there was in the great river in that 
flood-time ! The bear or deer, caught on a neck 
of land by the rising water and compelled to swim 
for shore, had a desperate time of it; and the 
human being unfortunate enough to fall or be 
pushed from a steamer's deck in the night, if he 
ever dragged himself up the far bank alive, 
never forgot to his dying day the pull and roll 
of that racing river. The water ate into and car- 

[166] 



THE RIVER 

ried away banks and obliterated sand-bars and 
islands; the river-channel was lost and the three- 
decker steamers ran where they pleased; the small 
towns in the valley were water- surrounded and 
seemed to hold fast by the slenderest of founda- 
tions; and the tall towers and turrets of the bor- 
dering bluffs, with the waves breaking at their 
feet, looked down on the giant elms in the bot- 
tom-lands trembling with the tug of the water. 
It was a wild river then. 

But through it all ran the dugout canoe with 
ease and safety, though with an occasional shiver 
as a wave hit it or an eddy twisted it. Perhaps 
it was not the best craft for an open, swift-run- 
ning river. Paddling against the current was 
hard work. One could not get pressure enough 
on the blade for continued headway, the wind 
was bothersome, and the high waves would fre- 
quently dash over the sides, especially if we were 
heavily loaded. So we took up with another 
kind of craft for use on the open river. That 
was the skiff. We made it easily enough out of 
a single bottom-board, bevelled on the edges, 
three weather-boards lapped one over another 
on each side, knees to hold the weather-boards 
firm, clinch-Dosts at bow and stern to which were 
C167] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

nailed the ends of the weather-boards, cutwaters 
duly tinned and made water-tight with white 
lead, and a coat or two of paint over all. This 
light craft we were able to equip with swivel oars, 
and they made a vast difference in the speed, 
headway, and general ease of getting about in 
open water. We used the skiff a great deal for 
long-distance trips, but it never was so effective 
as the dugout for hunting, sneaking, or slough- 
running. 

There were other small craft used by the lum- 
bermen and the rivermen, but we rather scorned 
them because of their size, their wooden row- 
locks with their noise, and their general unsuit- 
ableness for hunting; but they were, nevertheless, 
very serviceable boats. A great deal of activity 
was displayed just then on the river. The only 
entrance to the upper country in those days was 
by water. The full river floated three-decker, 
flat-bottomed steamers that came from St. Louis 
and ran up as far as St. Paul. The beating of 
their paddle-wheels and the sigh of their exhaust 
through the tall smoke-stacks were sounds that 
carried far on still days; and the low, deep tones 
of their whistles, as they blew for some landing, 
were turned into something half musical by com- 
[168} 



THE RIVER 

ing across the water. The few people who then 
lived in the river-valley could tell by the sound 
of the whistle just what steamer was coming in. 

Each white-and-blue messenger, perched high 
out of water, with covered decks, scrollwork pilot- 
house, gilded ornaments, and flying flags, came 
and went unannounced save by its whistle. As 
it neared the beach-landing a brass band of some 
strength and little skill struck up a popular air, 
a gang-plank was pushed ashore, a few people, 
the mails, some freight and live stock, were 
hustled off. Then came the tinkle of two bells 
from the engine-room, a churn of waters from 
the paddles, a backing out into the stream, and 
presently the "Northern Belle," the "War Eagle," 
or the "Dubuque" was again throbbing and beat- 
ing on its way. The little village, its one excite- 
ment passed, returned to slumber; and the still- 
ness of the wide valley came back as the sound 
of the paddle-wheels died out in the distance. 

Another kind of craft began navigating the 
river in that early time. The great forests of 
Wisconsin lying about the headwaters of the 
Chippewa River had been discovered and slashed 
into by the axe. Sawmills were put up that 
whipped the tall pines into lumber, which was 
[169] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

swiftly locked together In "cribs/' floated down 
the Chippewa in "strings/* and put together in 
the Mississippi in enormous lumber-rafts. When 
twenty or more strings of lumber were coupled 
up abreast with a long oar-sweep fore and aft of 
each string, and forty or fifty men were recruited 
as a crew, then the acres of floating lumber would 
be swung out into the channel and started for 
St. Louis or some other Southern destination. 

As boys we were much interested in the rafts. 
We fished and swam from them, occasionally 
took the river trip to St. Louis on them, and were 
more or less attracted by the crews that manned 
them. For the raft crew, part-Indian, part- white, 
made a rather picturesque and romantic show- 
ing. The dress was striking — a red or blue flannel 
shirt, a black slouch hat, black trousers, driving- 
boots to the knee with iron calked soles and heels. 
The wearers were mustached and insolent-looking, 
sometimes carried bowie-knives but usually no 
firearms, and generally did their fighting with 
their fists and boots. It was a more or less devil- 
may-care, disreputable crew, but had the small 
virtue of good nature. With its long oar-sweeps 
the crew kept the raft pointed the right way and 
in the channel. That was about its only work, 
and in that it was not always successful. 
[170] 



THE RIVER 

In stages of high water the swift current some- 
times swung an end of the raft against a bank, 
thereby rubbing off a dozen or more cribs of lum- 
ber, or perhaps caused the whole raft to saddle- 
back a sand-bar or small island, in which event 
cribs and strings often piled up in layers like ice- 
floes driven against a bridge-pier. At such times, 
under the inspiration of much cursing from the 
pilot, the red shirts grew energetic. Ropes were 
quickly run out, the lost strings were lassoed, and 
the pull of the main raft in the channel dragged 
off the stranded members. Under the strain the 
three-inch hawsers on the "snubbing- works" 
smoked and flamed with friction, and the air 
above the crew was festooned with profanity. 

Ordinarily, however, there was little sound or 
bustle coming from the lumber-raft. It drifted 
lazily on, moving a trifle faster than the current 
by virtue of its weight and headway; and the 
crew slept or played at cards between intervals 
of handling the oars or gathering for meals in 
the small board shanty erected in the middle of 
the raft. So silently the great acres of lumber 
moved with the current that oftentimes an In- 
dian, fishing from a canoe anchored in the middle 
of the stream, would be almost ridden under be- 
fore aware that a raft was near him. The raft 

C 171 ] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

drifted on from dawn to dusk and then the great 
hawsers were run out and made fast to some huge 
tree on the bank and the raft was gradually 
"snubbed" up until it came to a standstill along- 
shore. Night-running with large rafts was not 
the usual custom, except under moonlight. The 
steamers ran day and night, and tradition had it 
that the pilots did their best work on the stormiest 
and darkest nights; but the steamers were easier 
managed than a lumber-raft. 

It was many days before the raft was "snubbed " 
for the last time at St. Louis, or some other rail- 
way city. It was there dismantled and dispersed 
to lumber-yards, and sent east or south by freight- 
trains. The crew had nothing to do with this 
latter work. When the raft was finally tied up, 
their job was finished. Their next move was to 
get their money from the company, and then get 
rid of it forthwith in the river-front saloons. 
Whiskey, and its usual concomitants, generally 
used up the crew's wages within twenty- four 
hours. Then the sobered and surly were ready 
to go up the river again as deck passengers on one 
of the three-decker steamers. They slept on the 
lower deck, under the boilers, around the wood- 
piles, or among the boxes of freight. 
[172] 



THE RIVER 

After recovery from the debauch, they played 
cards, played practical jokes, and indulged in 
fighting. The steamboat's mate (always chosen 
in those days for his ability to stop a row by 
knocking people down) was the cause of animosi- 
ties. He swore too much. And at them. He 
was a bully and any one of them could ''lick" 
him. Some of them tried and generally came off 
second best. But occasionally the bully fared 
badly. On one trip up the river the mate of the 
"Dubuque'' tried to beat up a raftsman, but the 
raftsman's partner hit him from behind with a 
stick of cord-wood and he fell forward on the 
deck with a crushed skull. The partners went 
ashore at the next stop of the steamboat, dis- 
appeared into the back country, and nothing 
further was heard of the matter. 

There were ugly stories told about the steam- 
boat life in those days. The river was the natural 
runway of all the disreputable characters in the 
country. When a sheriff got after an outlaw, the 
outlaw could cross from one State to another by 
the river quite readily. The water left no trail 
and threw ofHcers off the scent. Besides these 
desperadoes there were all sorts of gamblers, cut- 
throats, and thugs to be found on the steamboats 

[173] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

as employees or habitues. A shooting or a rob- 
bery was not infrequent. People would often 
disappear, and, perhaps weeks afterward, a body 
would be brought up from the bottom of the river 
by the churn of passing paddle-wheels, and a 
white face would be seen on the waves of the 
wake. The pilots, from their high position on 
the hurricane-deck, would see these white faces 
occasionally and shudder with a superstitious 
dread. One man — a strong swimmer whom I 
had heard boast more than once that there was 
not enough water in the river to drown him — 
disappeared one night from a steamboat, and his 
body was found washed ashore on a river-island 
ten days later. His watch and money were with 
him and there were no bruises on the body. No 
one could guess what had happened to him. The 
swift water, that had rolled him and strangled 
him, said naught. 

One summer, during school vacation, I took 
the job of night-clerk on one of the river steamers, 
and it was thus that I heard not only many strange 
stories but came in as a witness to some strange 
happenings. At the start I was brought into 
contact with the raft crews and began to experi- 
ence difficulties. One day while standing in the 
[174] 



THE RIVER 

pilot-house, with the captain at the wheel (the 
pilot was below at dinner), word was brought that 
a drunken raftsman was trying to break in a barrel 
of whiskey which we were carrying as freight on 
the forecastle-deck. The captain told me to go 
down and stop him. It was on my tongue to say 
to him that that was the mate's business; but, 
not wishing to disobey orders, I thought I would 
go down and reason with the man. 

I found my drunken raftsman with a ten-foot 
fire-poker (which he had got from under the 
boilers) in his hands, trying to stave-in the barrel- 
head. I called to him to stop. He paused, hold- 
ing the poker in mid-air, and looked at me with 
the utmost contempt, for I was merely a thin, 
whey-faced boy. Then with a sudden blaze in 
his eyes he told me that if I did not get out of 
there he would run the poker through me. I was 
a new clerk, it was my summer's job to deal with 
the men of his class, and I realized instantly that 
I had to fight then or be trampled on forever 
after. Instantly I whipped out a small pearl- 
handled revolver and brought it to bear straight 
between his eyes. It was my turn to order 
that he drop that poker or I would shoot. The 
poker very slowly came down until its point 
[175] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

rested on the deck. The man paused, laughed 
a counterfeited laugh, and then made some re- 
mark about his guessing that I would not shoot. 
He turned aside to talk to a companion and 
passed it ofF that way, but I took charge of the 
barrel. 

While I was examining the poker dents in the 
barrel several other raftsmen came up. They 
wanted to know if I would have shot had the 
drunken one not given up. I insisted that I 
would. But in the midst of my boastings I began 
to feel very faint and felt sure that I was growing 
ghastly white in the face. I made an excuse to 
go back in the engine-room, where I was very 
glad to sit down on the engineer's chest and catch 
my breath and strength. I was near a collapse. 
But I had bluffed it through successfully, and all 
that summer I had the reputation among the 
raftsmen of being a young devil, a perfect fire- 
eater, and not to be trifled with. Reputation is 
sometimes very easily acquired. 

But there were vastly more of the amusing 
than the serious incidents happening from day 
to day. I can repeat only one. The steamer 
was coming to a beach-landing at Wabasha. The 
heavy gang-plank or bridge had been pushed out 
[176] 



THE RIVER 

over the deck edge ten or twelve feet preparatory 
to launching. At this juncture, and while the 
boat was twenty or thirty feet from shore, a 
middle-aged character came rushing down the 
companion-way from the upper deck. He was a 
curious-looking person in dress (he might have 
passed for a poor counterfeit of Uncle Sam), and 
held an old-fashioned carpet-sack in one hand and 
a cotton umbrella in the other. He rushed out 
on the end of the gang-plank, evidently thinking 
the boat was going out instead of coming in, and 
that he would be carried by his destination. One 
of the raftsmen quickly grasped the situation and 
called out behind his back: 

"Jump ! she's going out !" 

The man jumped and struck in the water up 
to his armpits. He waded ashore, still holding 
to his belongings, amid the roars and howls of 
the deck-hands and raftsmen. He then turned 
around and slowly began to realize that the boat 
was just landing and that he had been made the 
butt of a joke. He stood there a picture of sever- 
ity until the laughter had measurably died out. 
Then, shaking his wet umbrella violently at the 
boat's crew, he shouted: 

"I can lick the whelp that said 'jump.' " 
[177] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

The new howl of laughter that went up was 
tremendous. 

Fun that had at bottom some one's discomfiture 
was greatly enjoyed In the early West. The boat 
and raft crews were always tickled by the ridicu- 
lous, and the practical joke was ever being sprung 
on the lower deck. It frequently ended in fights 
wherein each party tried to throw or knock his 
opponent overboard, but then, even if successful, 
a roustabout more or less counted for little. The 
smoke-stacks sighed, the paddle-wheels beat on, 
and the steamboat crawled and crept slowly up 
the twisting channel. 

In stages of low water there were frequent 
groundings on sand-bars, and then the roustabouts 
went overboard by the mate's orders, went out 
in the water ahead with a huge sharp-pointed 
pole and a rope. From this pole, anchored in the 
sand, the steamboat pulled herself over the bar 
by winding in the rope on her windlass. The 
work of holding down the pole was left to the 
green hands, and out of it grew many jokes — 
some of them a little feeble. 

When the mouth of the Chippewa was reached 
the raft's crew disembarked, and some of them 
perhaps reshipped on smaller steamboats, like 
[1781. 



THE RIVER 

the "Pete Wilson*' or the "Minnietta," and went 
up to Eau Claire. The process of raft-making 
and river-running was repeated all summer long 
with slight variations. The rafting on the Chip- 
pewa was perhaps a little more exciting at times 
than on the Mississippi, because the stream was 
smaller and swifter and the strings of lumber 
saddle-backed bars and islands oftener. 

We liked the Chippewa better in the winter- 
time when the river was frozen and heavy snow 
lay upon it. Then with our feet in Norwegian 
snow-shoes (they are called "skis'* to-day) and 
a rifle at our back we went up the river to hunt 
deer in the big woods. But that is a story that 
may be reached farther on. 



[179] 



CHAPTER X 
TROLLING AND SPEARING 

The rafts, the sand-bars, the rapids, and the 
deep holes of the Mississippi were all intimately 
connected with fish and fishing. The river was 
alive in those early days and any one could catch 
fish. The lazy way of catching them was to sit 
on a raft, with two or three lines out, each one 
anchored to a grub-pin on the raft, and when a 
fish was hooked to pull in on the line. The only 
bait used was live minnows. There was no limit 
to the size of the bait or the hook. Nothing 
seemed too large. As for the fish, they ran from 
one to ten or more pounds in weight. 

Rod-and-reel fishing was almost unknown and 
never practised to any extent in raft-fishing. 
Playing a fish was a fine art we had not then ac- 
quired. The only thing worth while was the 
string of fish. So we hastily pulled them in, strung 
them through the gills, and watched the string 
grow. Of course there were days when the catch 
was slim, when nothing would bite, and whistling 
did no good; but there were other days when the 
[180] 



TROLLING AND SPEARING 

scaly spoil was staggering in weight. Everything 
under a pound was tossed back into the stream, 
unless it was a catfish, a sheepshead, or a sturgeon. 
The catfish was thrown out on the raft to see 
how long he could live without water, the sheeps- 
head was brained for the lucky stones in his head, 
the sturgeon had a shingle tied to his tail and 
was then turned loose in the stream to be mocked 
of his kind and eventually to die head downward. 

It was brutal business. Boys always have a 
more or less brutal strain in them, but I am glad 
to remember that this particular form of cruelty 
never appealed strongly to me. The young In- 
dians delighted in torturing everything. On a 
hunting trip with them one summer I recall that 
one day the squaws caught a number of turtles. 
They were put alive in a pot of water and the 
pot hung over a camp-fire. When the water grew 
hot the turtles began to scramble about. That 
seemed intensely amusing to the whole camp and 
I was laughed at because I did not like it. 

The smallest of the Mississippi fish that got 
on the string was the sand-pike. He weighed 
only a pound or more, was very edible, and de- 
cidedly gamey. He came out of the water with 
dorsal fins sharply set and had to be handled with 
[181} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

care. There were thousands of them slipping 
along the sandy floors of the river, and they not 
only bit voraciously at anything, but were bitten 
at by all the larger fish in the river. Sometimes 
a sand-pike, swallowing a minnow half as large 
as himself, and being pulled in on a line, would 
be attacked by a larger fish. The latter would 
set teeth into the sand-pike so firmly that both 
would find themselves on the raft before they 
knew it. The sand-pike seemed a much-sought- 
after food-fish, and when we constructed artificial 
minnows for spearing through the ice our model 
was the sand-pike. The larger pike — known as 
the wall-eyed pike — found in abundance in the 
Mississippi in the early days, was evidently an 
older brother, or at least a close relation of the 
sand-pike. Neither of them was, strictly speak- 
ing, a pike, but rather a pike-perch having two 
dorsal fins, where the true pike has only one. 
Names were confused in those days and are still. 
The true pike of the East is the pickerel of the 
West. 

The wall-eyed pike grew to a large size in the 
river, and occasionally one that weighed twenty 
pounds would be pulled out. They were a beau- 
tiful golden color on the sides, of substantial build, 
[182] 



TROLLING AND SPEARING 

great swiftness, and unparalleled voracity. They 
bit at everything and swallowed even their own 
progeny, after the cannibal-fashion of fish. After 
being hooked they made no great fight, but ac- 
cepted the situation calmly. They were always, 
with the sand-pike, considered as the best of the 
river fishes for food, having something of the fine 
flavor of the ordinary perch. Quantities of them 
found their way to our strings. 

A much rarer fish was the black bass — at least 
he was rarely caught on a set line, but could be 
tempted by trolling with a *' spoon-hook'' if you 
went to the swift eddies in which he delighted to 
swing and sway. Occasionally a white bass, 
travelling in schools, would be caught in numbers 
for a day or two, and then disappear for the rest 
of the season. Of skipjacks, gars, eels, and other 
ill-favored fish, there were enough and to spare. 
Strange specimens were always prowling along 
the river-bottom. And any sort of bait at the 
end of a set line would attract them. Frequently 
an enormous mud catfish, weighing thirty or 
more pounds, would be lifted out. The whites 
scorned them, but the Indians lodged no com- 
plaint against them as material for the camp-pot. 

Raft-fishing with a set line was always a little 
[183] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

dull, and when we craved more excitement we 
went out along the still sloughs with a long bam- 
boo pole (not rod) and a trolling spoon, or what 
was called in Minnesota a "spoon-hook," in quest 
of pickerel. The pickerel was to be found in 
still waters, lying under lily-pads or great bunches 
of slough-grass, and the bright flash of a passing 
spoon-hook put him into action instantly. He 
came out from cover with the swiftness and ac- 
curacy of an arrow, and crunched into the tin spoon 
like a nail-biter. When disillusioned by the hook 
in his jaw, he turned with a quick flirt of his pow- 
erful tail and you were immediately made aware 
that you had something more agile than a sheeps- 
head at the end of your line. He shot back into 
ambush, wound up your line in the grass and 
lily-pads, or jumped from the surface shaking his 
jaws to disengage the hook. And he got away 
quite often by these tactics. When landed, he 
usually turned out to be long, slim, with an un- 
dershot jaw and a far back dorsal fin — an Eastern 
pike but with Western ferocity. His weight was 
usually about four or five pounds, his color was 
dark olive-green on the back and yellow-spotted 
on the sides, his flesh yellow and not very appetiz- 
ing. But he was a fairly good fighter. 
[184} 



TROLLING AND SPEARING 

Not so good a fighter, however, as the black 
bass or the muskallonge. When we set out for 
real fishing it was with the canoe or the skiflF, and 
we trolled the eddies and sharp points of the 
Islands for black bass. This was done with a 
rod and a small spoon-hook, and the favorable 
spots were whipped from the end of the canoe, 
just as one would cast for trout in a lake. That 
was fine sport, because the black bass was then 
the very gamiest of the river fish. The way he 
swished the line and cut the water, dodged under 
sunken trees, or circled the canoe was thrilling, 
exciting, sometimes quite exasperating, when, 
owing to our stupidity and lack of skill, he out- 
generalled us aixd got away. When we got him 
in the canoe his dark olive-green color did not 
make us exclaim over his beauty, but his strength 
and swiftness always commanded respect. 

The muskallonge was quite another affair. We 
caught him by trolling with a very long line let 
out behind the canoe or skifi\, and he, like the 
pickerel, rose to the glittering spoon-hook. We 
found him in deep water — usually in the dark 
depths around the foot of Lake Pepin. He was 
a large and rather heavy fish — not so lively as the 
pickerel — but what he lacked in agility he made 
[185] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

up in weight and pulling power. He would pull 
after the manner of a calf on a rope, and would 
often tow the canoe or skiff for long distances, if 
he happened to be large enough. In size they 
ran up to thirty or forty pounds, and the greater 
their weight the stronger they pulled, but the 
less lively they were in dash. When gaffed or 
netted or dragged over the side and flung into the 
bottom of the canoe, they were rather gross-look- 
ing, with a heavy under jaw and a flat, dull eye. 
In color they were an unattractive green-yellow 
with pale spots on the sides. The Indians ate 
them, as they did everything of fish, flesh, or fowl; 
but the whites were through with them when they 
got the spoon-hook free. 

None of the line-fishing, with rod or spoon- 
hook or bait, was for a moment comparable to 
another kind of fishing that came with the spring 
of the year and lasted through the summer. I 
mean spearing from a boat at night by jack-light. 
It is now forbidden by law, but in the times of 
which I am writing nothing was forbidden, and 
every one was a law unto himself. Spearing by 
jack-light was made possible by the habit common 
to game-fish of lying at night in shallow water 
near the shore. Why they go there I am not able 
[186] 



TROLLING AND SPEARING 

to say — perhaps to escape for a time from the 
density of the deep pools. 

A flat-bottomed boat, with an iron jack, plenty 
of light pine-knots, and a long-handled spear made 
up the equipment. After dark on still nights the 
boat could be pushed along the shore, ten feet 
or more from the water's edge, without making 
the slightest noise. The pine-knots burning up 
brightly would illumine the water so that the 
smallest object on the bottom could be seen. 
Large fish were made out instantly, for they were 
usually lying, not under pads or grass, but in the 
open water — water not more than a foot or two 
in depth — and when the jack-light came over 
them the effect was not at first to frighten but 
rather to daze them. For a few moments they 
would not stir unless there was some ripple from 
the paddle or grate of the boat on the bottom. 

But it was only for a very few moments that 
the larger and more wary fish would stand the 
glare of the light. Then they would make a rush 
for deep water. It was the business of the man 
with the spear to strike before the fish started, 
or catch him with a swift-flung spear as he rushed 
out. There were a great many strange hits and 
many stranger misses. A running fish is not easy 
[187} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

to hit with a spear. And sometimes when hit he 
could give plenty of trouble. If the spear drove 
into the head or neck or shoulders near the back- 
bone the shock was paralyzing, and the struggle 
was slight; but if the aim was not true and the 
running fish was hit near the tail, the spear might 
hold him but there would be a struggle. 

The larger the fish the fiercer the struggle, and 
in the sloughs and bayous of the Mississippi there 
were miniature leviathans in those days. Many 
a time in my experience the spear was almost 
wrenched out of my hand, and one night I jumped 
out of the boat into the water to hold a huge 
muskallonge that had been hit far back on the 
body but was still held by the barb of the spear. 
The preliminary struggle in the boat had upset 
the jack, and the rest of the scene took place in 
the dark. The fish got away, and, of course, like 
all those that escaped, he was a monster. 

The water seemed full of monsters under a 
bright jack-light. The gar-fish were the most 
uncanny of all, and perhaps the catfish were the 
largest, though occasionally a sturgeon challenged 
for weight. Pickerel were the most plentiful, pike 
were not frequently seen, and bass were not seen 
at all. The smaller fry of things living, creeping, 
[188] 



TROLLING AND SPEARING 

and swimming was made up of eels, crabs, snakes, 
turtles, frogs, and their kind. Taken as a whole, 
the slough's bottom offered a strange tableau, not 
unlike the sea world as seen through a glass- 
bottomed boat. Everything was just a little 
weird. The perspective with the lights and 
shades got out of focus, and often the water acted 
as a lens to magnify or distort or create false ap- 
pearances. The man with the spear, after gazing 
at the illuminated bottom for a time, had diffi- 
culty in realizing the shore-line or the night sky. 
The jack-light dazzled and twisted every eye that 
looked at it or tried to see by it. 

And the number of eyes that watched that 
slowly moving light in the boat was extraordinary. 
It is generally supposed that the deer is the only 
game that pauses to look at a fire flame, but all 
animals within the circuit watch it. I have seen 
pheasants on the bank, ducks on the water, frogs 
and muskrats in the pools, and coons on the trees, 
all following in a dazed way the movements of the 
light. Even the pointer dog at the bottom of the 
boat (we always took a dog with us on every ex- 
cursion) grew quite wild under the artificial con- 
ditions, and had to be speared several times in 
the course of the evening to keep him quiet. 
[189] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

The dog particularly objected to fish being 
flung in the boat beside him, where they thrashed 
about with irresponsible inconsequence. He cau- 
tiously got up and smelled over each new arrival, 
but showed no disposition to take hold of them, 
even when invited to do so. Dogs do not dislike 
the taste of fish as they do that of toads and 
snakes; but they will not set teeth into them un- 
less forced to do so. A boat-load of wet fish is 
never very attractive, even to the man with the 
spear, and we often had a great many fish after 
an evening's spearing. The ease with which they 
could be taken with a spear finally led to the 
abolition of the practice through State statutes. 
It was akin to shooting deer by jack-light, and 
was tolerable only in the days when fish were 
swarming in every stream in the land. 

Spearing by torchlight was a summer sport, 
but the winter brought in something quite as ex- 
citing in the spearing through the ice. This was 
a method of attack handed down from the Indians, 
or at least I first learned about it from a half- 
breed. The first thing in the course of prepara- 
tion was to cut a hole in the ice about three feet 
in diameter. The ice on the upper river and its 
side-sloughs was usually about three feet in thick- 



TROLLING AND SPEARING 

ness. When that was out of the way and the 
small ice skimmed off the surface, the sunlight 
was shining in the hole with a gleam to scare 
every fish for fifty yards around. All the ice was 
covered with about two feet of snow, and that 
made a muffled light to the fish underneath. The 
hole had to have a muffling to make it correspond 
to the light of the main ice-field if we did not 
want the fish to move off the premises. Tepee- 
poles about eight or ten feet high, set in niches 
in the ice around the hole, frozen in by pouring 
water in the niches, the tops brought together and 
strapped, was the next step. Then about the 
poles were wound two or three layers of blankets. 
That kept the sunlight out of the hole and created 
a condition of the water underneath akin in light 
to that under the main ice-sheet. 

A wooden minnow — carved with a jack-knife, 
scarred by a hot iron into semblance of scales, 
eyed with glass pin-heads, finned with bright 
pieces of tin — was the lure. A tin tail was pro- 
vided, which, by bending to right or left, steered 
the minnow about in circles. Under his belly the 
minnow was loaded with lead so that he would 
sink in the water, and on his back, over his shoul- 
der, was placed a swivel and an attached line with 
[191] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

which the sinking was regulated. By manoeu- 
vring the line the minnow could be made to cut 
all sorts of attractive capers, and by its flashing 
tin fins and tail the fish were lured under the open 
hole. A short-handled spear, with a rope at the 
end of the handle which in turn was fastened to 
the tepee-poles, was the weapon of attack. The 
fisherman sat within the tepee on a small piece 
of board, with his legs around the hole. He held 
and played the minnow with his left hand and 
kept the spear in readiness in his right hand. He 
sat very still and made no motion until he struck. 
Pickerel and muskallonge were the chief fish 
speared through the ice, though pike, and even 
an occasional catfish, would dash at the minnow. 
Sometimes they attacked the minnow with a 
great rush, closed on the wood and tin fins, then 
let go and drew away under the ice for ten or 
fifteen minutes. After that perhaps they would 
come slowly back, drifting through the hole, and 
eying the sportive minnow with narrow curi- 
osity. That was the time to strike. If the strik- 
ing was done quickly, and the aim at the back of 
the head true, the struggle would be over before 
it was begun. A fish could not stand a spear- 
thrust in the back of the head or high up on the 
[192] 



TROLLING AND SPEARING 

back-bone. But in spearing through the ice the 
fish could see your every movement and the mo- 
ment you moved he moved also. He moved very 
swiftly, and the spear aimed at his head would 
sometimes catch him far back on the tail. Then 
trouble began, for if he were a large fish he 
thrashed and struggled in a violent manner. He 
would perhaps jerk the spear out of your numbed 
hand, or tear your tepee down about your ears. 
Such things happened more than once in my own 
experience; and every half-breed or white fisher- 
man had a tale to tell of nearly being dragged into 
the hole by a muskallonge, as big as a whale, 
that finally got away. 

The fish that did not get away, that were held 
by the spear and pushed under the blankets out 
on the ice and snow, went through a rather 
unique experience. If hit in the head or high up 
on the back-bone, they were killed, and that was 
the end of them; but if hit near the tail and not 
killed outright, they froze up before they died. 
The upper Mississippi region in those days was 
very cold in winter, and, with the thermometer 
ten or twenty degrees below zero in the daytime, 
it can be readily understood that a wet fish thrown 
out on the snow would freeze solidly in a very 
[ 193 ] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

few minutes. When the day's fishing was done 
the frozen fish were loaded on a small sled, like 
so many sticks of cord-wood, and sledded home. 
There they were all thrown into a large hogshead 
of fresh water and allowed to thaw out before be- 
ing dressed. The unique experience was that the 
merely wounded among the fish, thawed out, came 
to life, and amused themselves by swimming about 
in the hogshead. That always caused a large sur- 
prise on the part of the uninitiated, presumably 
because of the failure to reckon with the fish as 
a cold-blooded animal that could stand freezing. 
It seems that fish can stand being frozen better 
than being smothered. They must have air. In 
the very severe winters of the Northwest the still 
sloughs or inlets of the Mississippi would freeze 
several feet thick until under the ice would per- 
haps remain only a foot or two of water. Usually 
the mouth or entrance of the slough would be 
somewhat choked with sand or silt, and there the 
ice would freeze down to the bottom. Escape for 
the fish would thus be cut off. They would be 
caught in the pocket of the slough. I have heard 
the story told many times of holes, as long as a 
wagon body, being cut in these frozen sloughs, of 
the ice being taken out and the water allowed to 
[194] 



TROLLING AND SPEARING 

come up to the ice-surface, and of the rush of fish 
to the surface to get air. The stories ran that 
sometimes sleigh-loads of fish from these slough- 
holes were thrown out on the ice with nothing 
more romantic as a weapon than an ordinary- 
pitchfork. I doubt not there is a modicum of 
truth underlying this exaggeration, but I was 
never a witness at any of the fishing with a pitch- 
fork. 



[195] 



CHAPTER XI 
TROUT FISHING 

The weight of the fish has always been the as- 
tonishing factor in the big-fish story; but it is not 
so vital in the sport itself. The fisherman oflF 
the Newfoundland Banks who pulls up and stows 
away codfish, as he might so many sides of bacon 
or hams, is not impressed with the sport of it, 
whereas the man with light tackle who plays to 
a finish a speckled trout weighing a pound may be 
quite beside himself with excitement and joy. 

It is not the getting of the trout that counts so 
much as the manner of his getting. It has to be 
done according to well-established rules. You 
shall not catch him with bait any more than you 
shall net him or blow him with dynamite. He 
must be lured with a cast fly, skilfully hooked as 
he rises, and played with rod and reel to a legiti- 
mate finish. To be sure the fish eventually gets 
in the basket, as the bull in the ring falls to the 
sword; but there are rules for both the pool and 
the ring that must be observed. 

I need not go into the subtleties of fly-casting 
[196] 



TROUT FISHING 

and little-river fishing. My cousin Henry* has 
rather pre-empted that field. Perhaps he has 
caught no more trout than I, but he has fished 
expertly, knows trout-fishing intimately, and 
writes about it charmingly. Nor need I discuss 
the merits of the various flies — wet and dry after 
their kind — coachmen, doctors, professors, hackles. 
I have usually found that when trout rise they 
will do so to almost any kind of a fly, and when 
they are indisposed — well, they are indisposed. 
Some of my most fortunate fishing has been done 
with flies of my own impromptu manufacture, 
made out of materials wrested from a grouse's 
wing and a horse's tail. Sometimes when one is 
a long way from the nearest border town neces- 
sity becomes the mother of invention. Stanley 
and his party in exploring Africa sat down on the 
bank of a stream and starved because no one in 
the expedition had the small ingenuity to make a 
hook and line and go after the fish. But Stanley 
was British and had the British faculty for mud- 
dling through. 

My fishing along brooks and rivers has been 
sporadic, intermittent, inconsecutive, and done 

* Doctor Henry van Dyke, of Princeton, author of Fisherman's 
Luck, Little Rivers, etc. 

[197] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

more for the beauty of the stream than tne catch 
of fish. At first, Hke every boy, I fished with 
worms, flung my fish over my head into the 
meadow grass, stamped on them, and then 
wrestled with them to make them disgorge the 
hook. A httle later I developed fisherly curiosity 
and experimented with grasshoppers, crickets, and 
June-bugs; but the fish-basket bulked largest on 
worms. When still later I came to casting a gray 
or brown hackle on the stream and allowing it to 
drift with the current over waterfalls and into 
pools, I knew a distinctly difi^erent sensation. 
That was real trout fishing. Yet it was not until 
much later that my dear friend, Frank Thomson,* 
taught me how to cast a fly, how to strike, how 
to play a fish. He was the most expert fisherman 
(and the best companion) I ever knew. I shall 
never look upon his like again, either as man or 
fisherman. 

In early Minnesota days few people cared about 
catching anything so small as a trout and, indeed, 
there were not many to catch. There were good- 
looking streams in my end of the State, but no 
trout in them. Occasionally one would find a 

* Frank Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He 
died in 1899. 

C198] 



TROUT FISHING 

brook, like West Indian Creek, alive with black- 
backed, speckled trout, but that stream was 
rather an exception. The Minnesota trout, when 
finally located, proved a very lively fish, and my 
memories of him are pleasant; but I doubt if he 
(or any other trout) ever quite came up to the 
Catskill or Adirondack trout. We grow senti- 
mental about the Eastern fish, perhaps because 
we knew him in our boyhood; and misjudge the 
quality of the Western fish, perhaps because we 
met him for the first time in later years. But 
whatever the cause, I join the chorus in praise 
of the Eastern fish. To me he has always been 
the gamiest and loveliest of them all. 

Time was, and only a short time ago at that, 
when all the streams of New York State held 
their quotas of trout. So late as 1876 I caught 
beautiful specimens from a small stream running 
down from the Palisades and emptying into the 
Hackensack River above Closter. That was 
within twenty miles of New York City. And I 
was not poaching upon a private preserve but 
catching native fish in their native waters. The 
next year in Ulster County, at Peekamose, where 
a fishing club had been established, I found rare 
fishing in the small brook-fed lake. A few young 
[199] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

trout had been put into the lake to help out the 
native numbers, and so favorable were the waters 
that in a short time the place swarmed with fish. 
A fly cast from a boat along the edge of open water 
would meet with instant response, and a commo- 
tion and pulling under of lily-pads from a tangled 
line would follow. What beautiful fish, twisting, 
flashing, jumping out of water ! And what a 
beautiful lake set in a bowl of the mountains, 
where sound of foot or wheel never came, and 
where the tall pines on the mountainside swayed 
gently in a breeze that was not a wind. The 
club members were less than half a dozen, and 
Quincy Ward, the sculptor, was the most enthu- 
siastic of the number. Perhaps, besides trout, he 
found there at Peekamose that repose in nature 
which art tries so hard to acquire and recreate. 
It was in the mountains, the smooth lake, the 
soundless pines, the falling sunlight. The fish 
were merely an excuse for being out in the open. 
There are still many trout within fifty miles of 
New York, in streams and lakes that are con- 
trolled by clubs, and there is still some of the na- 
tive stock running in the brooks of northern New 
Jersey and New York. In Pike County, Pennsyl- 
vania (once a famous place to locate newspaper 
[200] 



TROUT FISHING 

stones of bears and snakes), small trout are found 
in almost every stream, but the larger specimens 
have gone their way to the frying-pan, or refuse 
to rise to the fly. The last brook I fished in that 
region was a beautiful slip of water, but the fish 
were not at home. 

Catching no trout, and discovering across the 
brook on a ledge of rock a large-sized rattlesnake, 
I amused myself by casting at him. Finally, by 
sheer accident, I hooked him in the tail and turned 
him over with a jerk. The hook broke out at 
that juncture and the much-surprised snake coiled 
up and rattled at empty space. He did not see 
me across the brook and had no idea whatever 
of giving warning. It is sometimes stated that 
the rattler is a very honorable snake and always 
tells you beforehand that he is going to strike. 
But the statement is incorrect. If surprised, he 
will strike at once without rattling. When he 
does rattle, it is merely a nervousness made mani- 
fest at the end of his tail. He rattles because he 
is rattled. 

The streams of the Alleghanies were once fa- 
mous for their fish, but they have been whipped 
to a finish in recent times. Twenty-five years 
ago I went to them more than once with Frank 
[201] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

Thomson, and he had knowledge of the best 
streams; but even then we never caught more 
than we could comfortably eat over the camp- 
fire. That eating over the camp-fire was not of 
fish rolled in cracker-dust and fried in a pan. On 
the contrary, they were dressed, seasoned, but- 
tered, and rolled singly in oiled tissue-paper, 
rolled a second time in newspaper, the ends of the 
newspaper were twisted up, and the whole pack- 
age soaked for a few moments in brook water. 
Then the wet package was pushed into the camp- 
fire and covered with hot ashes for half an hour. 
The result was a fish of unique flavor and tender- 
ness. 

Thomson knew cookery as he did everything 
under the sun; but his culinary skill was as noth- 
ing compared to his skill with the rod. He was 
a superb caster, and his wrist-work in striking a 
fish was the most masterful I have ever seen. 
There were certain pools, recesses, holes under 
rocks along the stream, where lone large fish would 
be found in back eddies. They would rise lei- 
surely and warily to a fly, take hold gently, and 
then, after a faint little tug, let go just as gently. 
Almost any tyro could coax them up once. Some- 
times I could induce them to rise a second time, 
[202] 



TROUT FISHING 

but I never could strike them. I would remem- 
ber the places, and after an hour would bring 
Thomson around to try for them. He could not 
only get them to rise again, but often struck them 
so quickly that the fish were hooked and landed. 
That was like bringing down a wild-flying grouse 
after every one else had emptied his gun in vain. 
Indeed, the net result of some of our fishing in 
Pennsylvania streams would have been rather 
slim but for his fine handling of the rod. Weir 
Mitchell once told me that Thomson's skill with 
salmon on the Restigouche was even greater than 
with trout, but I never had the fortune to see 
him make a salmon kill. 

Both Thomson and Mitchell had fished and 
shot in Scotland, and often talked enthusiastically 
about the difficulties of shooting driven grouse 
from butts, but I never heard them say much 
about the fishing. From which I rather inferred 
that they thought fishing in America was better 
sport. I never was able to meet with them over 
there, though I did some fishing through William 
Black's country in their time. Later, in the nine- 
ties, I was at Cluny Castle with the Carnegies, 
and tried at trout fishing in the streams and lochs 
of Inverness. It was, perhaps, more amusing 
[203} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

than thrilling, for the fish were neither very large 
nor very good fighters. The second day of mv 
stay there several members of the house-party 
fished one of the large distant burns, and returned 
late with sixteen trout, which they thought a re- 
markable catch. The host quietly informed them 
that their string was small and that he and I 
would go to the stream the next day and show 
them how to catch trout. It was good-natured 
banter, in which I took no part. 

But, sure enough, the next morning the station- 
wagon was at the door, James, the gillie, and the 
fishing-tackle were stowed in behind, and the 
host and myself were off. Arrived at the stream 
I was told we had only about three hours to fish, 
that I was to take James and go up-stream while 
the host went down-stream, and that we were 
to be back at the wagon by two o'clock. I ac- 
quiesced in everything except James, whom I 
protested I did not want. But James would fix 
my tackle, and tell me where the trout lay, and 
show me how to catch them, and — well, I could 
do nothing without James. But I continued to 
protest and asked to be relieved of the gillie's 
society. The good host, with James at his heels, 
finally disappeared down the glen, leaving me to 

[204] 



TROUT FISHING 

my fate. As soon as they were out of sight I sur- 
veyed the lay of the land, climbed over a three 
or four hundred-foot hill, and in half an hour 
stood near the headwaters of the stream. 

I began fishing at once in the pools, eddies, and 

backwaters; but with no luck. It took me half 

an hour to discover that the fish were lying on 

the rifiles instead of in the pools. Then I began 

catching them. I played none of them, but just 

threw them out on the grass and slipped them 

into the basket as fast as possible. I was fishing 

for score rather than for sport. I fished for a 

little less than two hours, then went over the 

high hill again; and when Mr. Carnegie came 

up I was seated in the wagon smoking a cigar 

as though I had been there for hours awaiting 

his arrival. He was delighted with his own luck 

and his face was wreathed in smiles. (I never 

knew him so happy as when fishing. It was his 

great joy.) He had caught sixteen — the same 

number that the house-party of the day before 

had caught. He had equalled all of them put 

together. He talked and smiled about it in a 

half-boyish way as we drove down the glen. 

Suddenly he turned- to me and asked if I had 
caught anything. 

[205] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

I said: "Yes." 

"How many?'* 

"I don't know." 

"Didn't you count them ?" 

"No." 

"Where are they?" 

"In the basket under the seat." 

"Well, they must be got out." 

A rubber blanket was stretched across our 
laps and he began taking the fish out of the 
basket. His eyes kept getting larger as the score 
mounted. I had sixty-nine. 

As the count closed he looked at me with some 
severity. 

"I thought you knew nothing about trout 
fishing?" 

I protested that I had said nothing whatever 
on the subject; he had inferred that because I 
knew something about art, therefore I knew 
nothing about anything else; that, as a matter of 
fact, if the truth were well told, I had in my life 
probably caught more trout than any or all of 
the house-party put together. 

The temptation to boast was too great for me. 
But I found out that evening that it was some- 
thing of a mistake. The dear host did not enjoy 
[206] 



TROUT FISHING 

being beaten, and after that I took pains in fish- 
ing and golfing to make no startling scores. Yet 
he was generous-minded enough at other times 
and in other ways, even about fishing. He was 
pleased when, a few days later, I beat one of his 
Scotch guests in fishing on Loch Dhu. I was 
an American and he was proud of everything on 
this side of the water. 

After that he and his dear friend, John Mor- 
ley* — the kindliest, most companionable, and 
best-poised Englishman I ever knew — took me on 
a fishing excursion to one of the more distant 
lochs, where we fished from a boat. Morley kept 
getting a gentle rise from under a rock every time 
the boat came around that way. There were 
two fish under the rock, but he seemed unable to 
strike either of them. He was then on his way 
to Kingussie, going up to London, and finally 
had to give up fishing to take his train. After 
he had gone in the wagon to the station the host 
and I circled the loch once more. When we 
reached Morley's rock he asked me to try for the 
two fish. I was fishing with two leaders and by 
a great fluke I caught both of the trout on the 

* Now Viscount Morley, but then plain John Morley, writer, and 
Secretary for Ireland. 

[207] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

first cast. Mr. Carnegie was so pleased that he 
telegraphed the result to Morley at once. It 
was another American triumph. He never missed 
a chance to put forth America. That was gen- 
erous of him, considering that he was Scotch by- 
birth and loved Scotland dearly up to his last 
hour. 

At Skiboj in Sutherland, in later years, I fished 
somewhat with the Laird,* but he and his friends 
were more attractive than the fish. A talk with 
Haldane,t Fairbairn,{ Yates Thompson, and the 
Laird was preferable to a wet boat and a flowing 
line. Fishing drooped. Tea on the moors, or 
sometimes at the Falls of the Shinn, where we 
could see the salmon jumping, with Mrs. Carnegie 
and the ladies of the house-party for company, 
was better than grouse-shooting. Perhaps we had 
all grown a little older and felt a little kindlier 
toward the birds and fishes. The wish to catch 
and kill does not persist forever. And humanity 
always regrets. Even some of the Biblical char- 
acters, after running a score with the gay world 
most of their lives, were said to regret pay-day. 

* After Mr. Carnegie acquired Skibo he was known to every one 
in the North Country as the Laird of Skibo. 
t Now Lord Haldane. 
I Principal A. M. Fairbairn, of Mansfield College, Oxford. 

[208] 



TROUT FISHING 

I have in mind an old half-remembered rhyme 
to the effect that as they grew older they began to 

" experience qualms. 
So Solomon wrote the Proverbs and David wrote the 
Psalms." 

The hunter and the fisherman arrive at a similar 
condition of conscience, and then perhaps write 
reminiscences of their slaughterings with pious re- 
grets interlarded — vide supra. 

Before and after Skibo I did some fishing in 
Norway, in Austria, in Switzerland; but it gave 
me no proper notion of Continental fish or fish- 
ing. And the European landscape was never wild 
enough for my taste. Fishing and hunting within 
the borders of civilization always seemed to me 
a bit incongruous. Even such a comparatively 
wild spot as the Yellowstone National Park had 
lost its native charm for me so far back as twenty- 
five years ago, because of the tramp of tourists 
and the dust of stages. At that time the trout 
in the lakes were almost too dull to rise to a fly. 
They came to the surface slowly like catfish, and 
when struck, the easiest way to land them was 
to put the rod over one's shoulder and tow them 
ashore. The smaller fish in the swift-running 
streams were far more gamey, and I remember 
[209] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

several mornings of rare sport playing fish in a 
huge eddy under a cut bank. But the glory of 
the Yellowstone departed with the coming of 
the tourist. 

What is now the Glacier National Park has 
doubtless suffered in the same way, though I 
have not been there since it was nationalized 
and opened to the automobile and the owner 
thereof. In the early days there was excellent 
fishing in the streams of the eastern slope — Cut 
Bank, Swift Current, Red Eagle Creek. In fact, 
almost any stream gave forth trout in those days 
— trout that fought and feinted and leaped quite 
as lively as one could wish for. Just what trout 
family they belonged to I cannot now remember. 
At that time and in that Western country there 
were no fine distinctions, and trout were merely — 
trout. The Glacier Park fish were faintly spotted, 
with rather black backs, and were sometimes 
called "mountain-trout** — a general name — but 
they were not speckled or rainbowed or golden 
on the sides. The larger lake-trout were found 
in St. Mary's and in the other lakes of the park, 
but no one cared to disturb them except the 
Blackfeet Indians. A lake-trout caught with a 
spoon-hook from a boat, or a steelhead taken 
[210] 



TROUT FISHING 

with a spinner, is always a poor compromise for 
the brook-trout that rises to a fly. 

To be sure, the steelhead weighing fifteen 
pounds and caught with a spinner while wading 
a river up to your waist is something of a fighter, 
and does not give up the ship without a struggle. 
I have caught them in the Fraser, the Columbia, 
the Rogue, and other rivers, and everywhere 
they have given good report of themselves; but 
they had not the fascination, and did not give 
the thrill, of the smaller fish so often played and 
landed from the swift waters of the Kicking Horse 
River or the brooks running into the Fraser. 
British Columbia twenty-five years ago was a 
fisherman's paradise. The salmon would not 
rise to a fly, but it was a sheer delight to see their 
endless numbers moving in procession, mounting 
the streams, jumping the falls. And the British 
Columbia trout rose swiftly at almost any sort 
of a fly, and when struck, cut the pool with the 
line, swished the foam under the waterfall, and 
jumped clear of the water, shaking at the hook 
with great cunning. 

The rainbow-trout were at that time found in 
almost all of the streams of southern Washington, 
Oregon, and California. I cannot recall if they 
[211} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

were in the streams running down from Mount 
Rainier, but they were in abundance at the head- 
waters of the Coquille River in western Oregon 
not more than fifteen years ago. I caught them 
then on the Coquille, fished for them there for 
nearly two weeks, and marvelled much at their 
beauty. The rainbows seemed at home in that 
wilderness with the wild rose, the climbing clem- 
atis, and the tall Port Orford cedars throwing 
their shadows across the rushing river. Ah ! what 
splendid canyoned water ! And what wonderful 
fishing ! I have caught the rainbows all along the 
Sierra, through California to the Mexican border, 
but those in the Coquille River were easily the 
finest of their family. 

At the same time with the rainbow-trout in 
the Coquille the smaller creeks of Oregon, such 
as those tributary to the Rogue River, were 
tenanted by a smaller, black-backed, silver-bel- 
lied trout that rose to the fly more quickly and 
fought more tenaciously than the rainbow. He 
had many names, according to locality, but the 
usual designation was merely "brook-trout" — a 
native trout not unlike those in the Minnesota 
streams of my boyhood. The McCloud River, 
the Kaweah, King's River are now stocked with 
[212] 



TROUT FISHING 

rainbow, golden. Eastern, and Loch Leven trout, 
like almost all of the Sierra streams of California; 
but the fishing is not what it was twenty years 
ago. One could then stand in the waters of King's 
River Canyon and catch a dozen fish without 
changing his position. I remember coming upon 
an enclosed basin under a waterfall at one place 
in the river that I could not get down to. I let 
out a line from the rocks forty feet above. As 
soon as the fly struck the water it was seized, and 
I, rather tamely, reeled up the flapping, struggling 
fish. Three times I did this and then paused. 
I doubt not I could have taken fifty fish from 
that basin, but the manner of their taking was 
rather stupid and I stopped. 

But that time has passed on forever. Only 
a memory of it remains. In Southern California 
the streams running down from Greyback, San 
Jacinto, and other high mountains of the Sierra 
were once full of mountain-trout — trout with a 
bright olive-green back, silver sides dotted with 
points of jet, and a dark stripe running lengthwise 
down the centre of each side. That was a very 
lively, gamey fish, but his voracity and the vo- 
racity of the tourist long ago proved his undoing. 
I caught a few of them about ten years ago from 
[213] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

a little stream running 'down the desert side of 
Greyback, and occasionally a rancher finds one in 
his irrigating ditch far down in the valley; but 
they have become a rarity, almost a curiosity. 
Some of the Southern California brooks have been 
stocked with rainbow or golden trout, but even 
these do not last long. The tourist whips them 
out about as rapidly as they are put in. The 
trout and the quail of California seem doomed to 
extinction. 

Even the sea-fishes of the Pacific coast are 
beginning to stagger before the assaults of the 
sportsman and the marketman. The barracuda, 
the tuna, redfish, kelpfish, rock cod, Spanish 
mackerel — all sorts offish, gamey and otherwise — 
are growing less. Farther down on the coast, in 
old Mexico — where, years ago, foot of tourist 
never came and the "sportsman" was unknown — 
there were great swarm.s of sea life, practically 
undisturbed save for the pelicans, gulls, and 
divers. The shallow sea-floor for miles around 
the mouth of the Yaki River was one vast oyster- 
bed, with oysters studded so thickly that there 
seemed no room for more. The Indians brought 
them into Guaymas and sold them for six cents 
a hundred — the very finest and largest oysters 
[214} 



TROUT FISHING 

in the world. As for fish, great and small, the 
sea trembled with them. Great schools of cabrilla, 
tortuaba, mackerel, ran everywhere, and droves 
of porpoises followed in their wake taking toll of 
them. 

And sharks ! I often walked along the cliffs 
beyond Guaymas watching the chase of the por- 
poises and the roll of the sharks with a strange 
wonder over the completeness of their equipment. 
They were so splendidly constructed for slaughter. 
Often in coming into the Bay of Guaymas in a 
small fishing-schooner the sharks would follow 
the schooner almost to the landing, and many 
were our devices for catching them; but our equip- 
ment for killing was very crude as compared with 
theirs. 

Sea-fishing never has had the fisherman's last- 
ing love and devotion — not even the fishing for 
tuna or tarpon. It is usually a contest for weight, 
in which mere force plays too great a part. Far 
more beguiling and inspiring the skilful casting 
of a small fly on the rushing waters of the moun- 
tain brook. And far more beautiful the tiny 
scrap of speckled or rainbow life than any monster 
of the shore or the depths ! The brook-trout is 
the fisherman's delight. 

[215] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

May his tribe increase ! But there is a chilly 
feeling that it will not, that his numbers are grow- 
ing yearly less, and that with many another rep- 
resentative of American wild life he will eventually 
disappear from the scene. 



[216] 



CHAPTER XII 
GAME-BIRDS 

The hunting days of my boyhood are asso- 
ciated in memory with warm spring weather in 
Minnesota, blue skies, still air, light-green foliage, 
the hum of bees in the grass; and, coming down 
from the prairies stretching beyond the high bluffs 
of the Mississippi, the faint boom ! booom ! 
boooom ! of mating prairie-chickens. No roar of 
trains nor whir of factories to break the stillness; 
no smoke or dust of cities to blur the blue ! The 
long valley was a new land then, and the great 
river that ran through it was a clear and silent 
river moving down its wide valley in undisturbed 
volume toward its ocean home. 

The bluffs — those rock-ribbed heights cut and 
left with^ abrupt face-walls by water- wear thou- 
sands of years ago — were the great lookouts upon 
the valley. From their tops, lying upon some 
Indian signal-rock, one could see many miles up 
and down the waterway — could see the river 
widening, narrowing, flashing, and disappearing 
in a haze of blue distance. The bluff walls with 
[217] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

their escarpments were broken through here and 
there by the valleys of tributary streams, and 
back from these coulees stretched the great prairies 
waving westward to the Rockies. The prairies 
led on to No Man*s Land — the land of adventure 
and surprise, from which came back stories of 
buffalo and Indians, running fights and wild rides 
for life. It was all an enchanted land in the imag- 
ination of a boy. 

But we made no long ride to come up with the 
prairie-chicken — the pinnated grouse of the West. 
Every open prairie spot or lone wheat-field con- 
tained "chickens'* in those days. We drove up 
the coulees and out on the prairie, turned loose 
the dogs, and got out to shoot when the dogs came 
to a point. Sometimes we shot from the wagon, 
though the horses usually objected to having 
guns fired over their heads. The shooting began 
in August, but before that we went out, without 
guns, to train the young dogs on the little 
chickens. It was famous sport to see a timid 
young dog point, and creep up step by step upon 
a covey, until he reached a place where he could 
not be urged or driven farther because of the 
heaviness of the scent. When the covey rose 
and scattered, and the young chickens were 
[218] 



GAME-BIRDS 

marked down, there would be more point, creep, 
crawl, and tremble from the young dogs — the 
ones behind "backing" the one in the lead with 
blind confidence in his nose. The small birds 
would often lie so close that the dog could come 
within a few feet of them, and the small boy could 
catch them in his hat. When caught, the dis- 
tressed "peep" of the bird would almost drive 
the dogs out of their minds. 

But nothing was hurt until the chickens were 
nearly full-grown. Then the season opened up 
with one or two dogs and three or four guns. 
After the covey rose, was shot at, scattered, and 
marked down, the dogs began showing their best 
work in pointing the single birds. Then, too, be- 
gan the best shooting. It was not difficult shoot- 
ing. An older brother one afternoon shot thirty- 
three birds (which included nine double right and 
left shots) without missing a bird. He stopped 
then because the bag was full, but it seemed as 
though he could have gone on indefinitely without 
missing. To be sure, he was the best shot with gun 
or rifle that I ever knew, but then the prairie- 
chicken was not a difficult bird to knock down. 
He took to wing and travelled about as fast as 
the grouse on the Scotch moors — no faster, no 
[219] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

slower. Late in September, when larger grown 
and stifFer of wing, he rose at greater distance 
and required quicker work. But during the first 
two weeks of the season the shooting was easy— 
so easy that, as I have said, it was sometimes 
done from a wagon. 

The prairie-chickens in the early afternoons were 
usually in the cover of long grass about a grain- 
field, dusting in the gopher hills, or lying in the 
shade of some scrub oak. The dogs found them 
there, and when the covey rose the guns took what 
they could. After the remaining birds had scat- 
tered, each bird lay close and rose singly. The 
shooting was assigned to the guns in turn. We 
usually had some Eastern visitor with us, who was 
given the courtesy of first shot. After his "new 
double-barrelled breech-loader had been emptied, 
and without results, the field was open to the 
family in step-ladder order — the youngest, of 
course, coming in at the end. When every one 
had fired and missed, and the youngest finally 
brought down the bird with his single-barrelled 
muzzle-loading musket, there was some Homeric 
laughter indulged in. That was called "eye- 
wiping.** It was highly esteemed as a hunting 
stunt. I remember the youngest "wiping** the 
[220} 



GAME--BIRDS 

eyes of two shooters on a summer afternoon, not 
once, but seven different times. It is a wonder 
the discomfited did not shoot him for his uncon- 
cealed insolence of triumph. 

In October the coveys came together in great 
gangs, in flocks numbering hundreds. They then 
came down from the prairie heights and took up 
with the valley corn-fields, where the farmer boys 
would occasionally hunt them by surrounding a 
gang, moving in on them simultaneously, and 
shooting them overhead as they flew out of the 
field. They were at that season of the year not 
very good to eat, being thin and tough; but the 
shooting was acceptable and fairly difficult, since 
the birds flew fast and wild. But there is no 
more of that. The prairie-chicken is now almost 
as scarce as the buffalo, and the day is merely 
to-morrow when he will be as extinct as the grizzly. 

The sharp-tailed grouse that I used to shoot in 
Montana in the eighties now puts in only an acci- 
dental appearance, if indeed he is to be found at 
all. I have not seen one for thirty years. The 
sage-cock, a fine large member of the grouse fam- 
ily, also belongs in the scarce category. In the 
early days no one would shoot him or eat him 
because of the tradition that he tasted "sagey," 
[221] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

but the sportsman came in and shot him "just 
for fun," with the result that there are few left 
to shoot. The fool-hen (Franklin grouse) was in 
the Siskiyou forests of Oregon twenty years ago, 
but I have not heard of him or from him since. 
He was such a confiding dunce that every pot- 
hunter must have found him an easy mark. 

The grouse of the Scotch moors corresponds 
rather closely to our prairie-chicken, having like 
habits, and not dissimilar ground over which to 
roam. I never shot at them. In my Scotch 
days I had quite gotten over the desire to kill 
things; but I used to go out with the shooters 
almost every day to see the dogs work and to 
view the moors. I have also seen the shooting of 
grouse from butts, though I cannot speak of its 
difficulties from a shooter's point of view. I have 
heard men like Lord Alverstone (when he was 
Sir Richard Webster) and Yates Thompson talk 
away half the night about driven grouse, but I 
never got more than a yawn out of the conversa- 
tion. The wonderful moors, than which there is 
no finer country in the world, with their flowing 
lines, their purple heather, and their splendid 
skies, would never come in for a moment's com- 
ment. It seemed very odd that grown-ups could 
[222] 



GAME-BIRDS 

so miss the glory of the world for a smell of burnt 
powder and a few pounds of flesh. 

The grouse of Great Britain are merely a fad 
of the rich, and yet the poorest of the poor are 
tremendously interested in the bags made on the 
1 2th of August. And every one in the land will 
recite for you: 

**Up gets a guinea, 
Pop goes a penny, 
Down comes half a crown." 

The meaning, of course, is that a grouse costs a 
guinea to raise, a pennyworth of ammunition to 
kill, and that dead he is worth in the market only 
half a crown. The bunches of grouse that come 
into the London markets immediately after the 
opening of the shooting season are always curi- 
ously eyed by the passing crowd. Perhaps that 
is as near to the open as many London dwellers 
ever come. 

The American ruffed grouse, usually called a 
pheasant, is an Eastern bird, and is not usually 
found far west of the Mississippi; but in Minne- 
sota days we shot many of them in the woodlands 
and bushes around the bases of the river-bluffs. 
The prairie-chicken was something of a fool com- 
[223] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

pared to him. He got up unexpectedly out of 
a thicket, scared the shooter ahnost out of his 
wits with his bustling roar, and went up and out 
through the trees like a meteor. You caught him 
with a snap-shot, if you could. More often than 
not he went scot-free. He would lie to a dog only 
when young and in the covey. When older grown, 
he ran in twos and threes and rose wild. A famous 
game-bird — one of the most famous on Ameri- 
can soil ! I used to hear his drumming in the 
early summer and made many attempts to see 
him on his native log in order to find out how he 
made that sound; but he was perverse and never 
drummed when I was in sight. To this day I 
am in ignorance as to whether he beats his wings 
against the log, against his breast, or against the 
air. Perhaps the drumming is in kind a similar 
performance to that of a barnyard cock that flaps 
his wings before crowing. 

The ruffed grouse, during the fierce Minnesota 
blizzards, often took refuge under the snow. So, 
too, did his smaller cousins, the quail. It was 
the same "Bob-White" quail that we knew in the 
Eastern States, but grown perhaps more hardy 
by Western exposure. Usually in severe weather 
the covey would get together under the lee of 
[2241 



GAME-BIRDS 

some snow-bank on the edge of timber, where, pro- 
tected from the wind, they would sit through a 
big storm; but they have been found singly inside 
the snow-bank and frozen to death. The lack of 
food rather than the weather caused their death. 
Almost any bird, with a full crop to draw upon 
for heat and his high bird-temperature, can get 
through severe cold; but he starves out very 
easily. 

It is usually said that the migration of birds in 
the spring and autumn is to avoid cold, but it 
would be truer to say that they migrate because 
of food conditions. The song-birds come early 
in the spring and stand much rough weather, and 
they go early in the autumn when the temperature 
is still warm. The robins, for instance, come 
when the worm supply is plentiful, and the as- 
sumption is that they prefer worms to any other 
diet; but as a matter of fact, when the summer 
comes on and they can get fruit and berries and 
seeds, they never touch worms. When worms 
and berries both go out the robin goes South, even 
though it is warm October. 

The Minnesota quail, as a game-bird, was our 
delight, and practically our exclusive quarry. 
No one else would hunt him in the early days be- 
£225} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

cause he was not big enough — not enough of a 
table asset. There never was a more princely 
member of the grouse family, never a finer game- 
bird. We loved him for the October woods, the 
fallen leaves, the golden fields, and the mellow 
sunlight. To this day he is in memory so closely 
associated with the happy autumn fields and the 
days that are no more that tears "rise in the heart 
and gather to the eyes" in thinking of him. It 
is such a pity that we ever shot him ! It seems 
now, if it did not then, that we were killing the 
spirit that animated the whole scene and made it 
worth while. But the boy has little or no senti- 
ment; he is merely a boy. We shot, and the quail, 
being no such swift dodger as the ruffed grouse, 
went home with us. 

I never had quite the same sentiment about 
the California valley-quail, because he was only 
a hoodlum compared with Bob-White. Thirty 
years ago he travelled the country in gangs of 
several hundred and inspired about as much love 
and respect as does the present-day starling of the 
Atlantic coast. Every one who wanted a meal 
shot at him — even pot-shotted him on the ground 
with his fellows. He would not lie to a dog when 
in large flocks, and the flock had to be scattered 
[226] 



GAME-BIRDS 

before any single-bird shooting began. Even then 
the shooting was tame as compared with Bob- 
White. You shot and ran for your bird before 
he crawled down a gopher-hole or crept into a 
cactus patch. Unless he was killed outright, he 
was a difficult bird to bag. The spirit of life was 
strong in him, and his little legs would keep run- 
ning, even though his wings were broken and his 
body shot-laden. One had to concede his tough- 
ness, even when he got on the table. He had 
that quality of endurance that belongs to all life 
on or near the desert. 

But the valley-quail has gone the way of all 
game in the Southwest. There were always a 
few scattered flocks of them in the desert, living 
near water-holes or near underground water; and 
some of these flocks still remain there because the 
tourist in his car, with his shotgun on the front 
seat, will not go so far afield. Perhaps for a 
similar reason some flocks of the mountain-quail — 
no relative of the valley-quail — are still to be found 
in the inaccessible parts of the Coast Range. Of 
recent years they have taken to the thick chap- 
arral of the high mountains where gunners cannot 
go, and that, for the moment, has postponed their 
extinction. They are not so wary or fleet of foot 

[227] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

as the valley bird, and their habit of standing on 
rocks or logs and curiously eying the stranger is 
fatal to long life. With so much confidence they 
are easily shot. I have seen them often and 
watched them by the hour, but I am pleased to 
record that I never shot at one. They were too 
innocent and too beautiful to be killed. 

As for the woodcock, the Pacific slope never 
knew him. He is an Eastern and a Mississippi 
Valley bird, or perhaps I should say was, because 
he is not now to be found in the creek bottoms 
and brook resorts where once the soft mud was 
peppered with the "borings" of his long bill. 
Occasionally an odd one comes back to the old 
haunts, and at your approach rises wild and flies 
fast, but his kind has so dwindled away that it 
may almost be counted as vanished. Where the 
few living members of the family continue to 
breed can be guessed at but not readily ascertained. 
There are some left, and near my New Jersey 
home I still see an occasional one in the spring or 
fall, at the times of migration; but the sight is a 
rare one in these days. Only this last spring I 
saw a male bird by the edge of a brook, strutting 
up and down like a little turkey-cock with his 
tail spread and his wings trailing the ground; but 
[228] 



GAME-BIRDS 

alas ! he was strutting alone. There was no hen 
bird near to admire him and mate with him. 

The woodcock never was very gregarious, never 
a gangster in flocks of hundreds, never a hoodlum. 
He was always an aristocrat, living in the solitudes, 
quite alone except at the breeding-season, always 
more or less sufficient unto himself. The dozen 
or fifteen in the young brood trailed with the 
mother, quickly learned for themselves how to 
bore for worms, and by the 4th of July were 
almost, if not quite, full-grown. They were gen- 
erally found alone after the last days of June, and 
remained alone until the next year's breeding- 
season. They were always in hiding — in the 
grass, or thickets of willows, or in briar patches 
— lying close and very difficult to see on the 
ground. Sometimes it was possible to flush them 
by tramping near them; but a dog was usually 
necessary in hunting them. 

The most intelligent work of which a dog was 
capable would come to the fore in hunting wood- 
cock. The scent was by no means so strong as 
that of the quail, and single birds lying in thick 
cover gave out very little intimation of their pres- 
ence to the twitching nostrils of the average "bird- 
dog.*' It required either a young and timid setter 
[229] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

or an old and careful one to handle woodcock quite 
right. Little could be done by trailing, and so 
we allowed the dog to work against the wind 
with upraised head, getting the scent by wind- 
ing. The necessity was for a slow, trotting mo- 
tion, with great care that an instant stop should 
be made at the first faint scent. 

We had beautifully trained dogs, for we hunted 
woodcock in the Mississippi bottoms very often 
in the early Minnesota days. After stumbling 
over and flushing a bird or two, and being cuffed 
and scolded for it, the setter came down to a slow 
trot, and, when the scent came on the wind, the 
gait was reduced to a walk, and finally to a dead 
stop — a point. I can see that young timid setter 
snuffing the breeze and trotting back and forth 
through the little maple thickets of the Missis- 
sippi bottoms, as plainly to-day as fifty years 
ago. What cunning he had ! How well he came 
to know the game ! And what splendid game 
it was ! 

When at last we walked in ahead of the dog 
and flushed the bird, how that bird whistled up 
through the tree-tops or swung out at the side 
and turned the corner of the thicket, or cork- 
screwed back over our heads ! It required all our 
[230} 



GAME-BIRDS 

quickness and skill to stop him. He was, all told, 
the very hardest bird on our list to hit. And 
alive or dead the very noblest to look at. We 
shot at him as he disappeared through the leaves 
of a tree or over a tree-top, and were almost 
sorry when, a few minutes after, a few light- 
brown feathers fluttering down to earth would 
tell us that we had made a hit. 

In September we hunted woodcock during the 
early afternoon, and at sundown went to the 
rice lakes for the evening flight of ducks. The 
woodcock were not so numerous that we got more 
than a dozen or so at a time, except during one 
July rise in the river. The rise flooded the bot- 
tom-lands and drove the birds step by step up 
to a ridge of high ground perhaps two hundred 
yards wide and a mile long. We surmised that 
the woodcock might be bunched on that tem- 
porary island and went there in the canoes with 
a dog. But the dog was quite superfluous. There 
were too many woodcock, he became bewildered 
by them, and finally came in to heel with lolling 
tongue. 

Woodcock got up every few feet. I had never 
seen so many. There were hundreds of them. 
But another winged spirit excelled them in point 
[231] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

of numbers. That was the mosquito. There 
were billions of them. They, too, it seemed, had 
been driven out of the flooded grass-lands to 
higher ground. We attacked the woodcock but 
the mosquitoes attacked us. And we fared worse 
than our game, for we had to quit almost as soon 
as we had begun. The next day we came back 
reinforced with gloves and nettings about face 
and head, but again we had to quit. The mos- 
quitoes, with bills as large almost as those of the 
woodcock, bored through to our backs and shoul- 
ders, and assaulted our legs through breeches 
and boots. We got into the canoes and "beat to 
open sea," with the mosquitoes following after 
us in a cloud. 

The great numbers of woodcock on that point 
of land remind me that one year in Minnesota 
there was a flight of English (Wilson) snipe that 
came from I knew not where and disappeared as 
mysteriously as it came. For ten days the slough- 
banks were lined with snipe. They got up and 
squawked and gyrated away at every foot. An- 
other year appeared many flocks of golden plover 
—the first and the last ones I ever saw. And in 
1870, or perhaps it was 1872, the sky was dark- 
ened with flocks of wild passenger-pigeons. Again 
[232] 



GAME-BIRDS 

and again, day after day, I saw passing up the 
Mississippi Valley cloud-flocks of pigeons that 
extended from the Wisconsin to the Minnesota 
bluffs, a distance of five miles. The flocks con- 
tinued daily and all day long for several weeks. 
Everybody shot into the nearer and smaller flocks, 
until the pigeon became a nuisance in the kitchen 
and an unappetizing article of food on the table. 
In that year the passenger-pigeons had a 
monster roost in the Mississippi bottoms near 
the mouth of the Chippewa River, where the 
birds swarmed like bees, where every little tree 
was loaded down with nests, and eggs, crowded out 
of the nests, were lying on the ground so thick 
that one could hardly step without crushing them. 
When the young pigeons were half-grown and 
could not yet fly, some "sportsmen" went there 
with clubs, shook and beat the trees until the 
young birds fluttered out and fell to the ground, 
and then the "sportsmen" tore their breasts off 
with their forefingers, flung the breasts into a 
bag, and threw the carcasses on the ground. That 
is the wretched kind of thing that one does not 
like to write about or think about, and yet it 
was perhaps just such butchery that was respon- 
sible for the absolute extinction of this bird. 
[233] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

There were such numbers of them then that 
scarcity seemed a word to laugh at. The roar 
of that pigeon-roost — a roar like a distant water- 
fall — could be heard at Wabasha, eight miles away. 
The roar came from the "knac-a*' call of the 
birds, mingled with the flutter and beat of count- 
less wings. 

The coming and going of birds In great flocks 
or gangs illustrates a gregarious instinct without 
exactly explaining it. In the spring and fall al- 
most all the birds get together in family flocks, 
and then move North or South together, presum- 
ably for mutual company and protection. The 
robins, blackbirds, bobolinks, swallows, bluebirds, 
do this as invariably as the ducks and geese. The 
practice seems not different, except in continu- 
ance, from the travel of herring, mackerel, or 
bluefish in the sea. There Is evidently a feeling 
of safety in numbers, and though toll is continu- 
ally taken by hawks and guns and porpoises, each 
one probably thinks his turn has not yet come. 

But the appearance of Wilson snipe, to which 
I have referred, as also that of the passenger- 
pigeons, was sporadic, confined to one year, with 
no precedent or subsequent appearance. In Mon- 
tana, in 1883, I witnessed a great flight of sickle- 
[234] 



GAME-BIRDS 

bill curlew, lasting for three days of wind and 
rain, that was again unprecedented in my experi- 
ence. They came in flocks of twenty or thirty, 
following like waves at sea, flying low and mak- 
ing no sound. It was almost unbelievable that 
there could be so many curlew on the continent 
or in the world. There were thousands upon 
thousands of them. I knew that the curlew bred 
on the plains and table-lands, and I had been fol- 
lowed when on horseback for long distances by 
dipping and hawking birds because I had come 
too near their nests; but what Montana and 
Wyoming bred in curlew could never have ac- 
counted for the enormous numbers that passed 
overhead in those few days. Penguins, pelicans, 
cormorants, divers, ducks, and geese in huge 
gangs were not unusual things along the shores 
and waterways of the Pacific; but curlew in thou- 
sands in Montana, in August, was an entirely 
new story. 

But nature is always presenting us with sur- 
prises. And perhaps we are surprised only be- 
cause we are ignorant. Our knowledge is very 
fragmentary, and we have done very little toward 
putting together the fragments. The world has 
been plagued with theories, and practically all of 
[235] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

them based on insufficient information. If wc 
but knew our facts, they would point their own 
conclusions, and neither theory nor argument 
would be needed. 



[236] 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE DEER FAMILY 

When the snow began to fall and the cold be- 
came intense we put away the shotguns and got 
out the rifles. The deer season had arrived and 
there were many deer in the big woods of Minne- 
sota and Wisconsin in the early days. But they 
had been shot at by the Indians and hunted by 
whites until they were very shy. Instinctively 
they watched their back track and^ after pawing 
up a bit of moss or dry grass from under the snow, 
they would look about in every direction with 
eyes quick to detect the slightest movement and 
ears set like receivers to catch the slightest sound. 
The pack of snow under foot, or the whip of a 
branch, would start them as though shot at by 
a machine-gun. It was difficult to outwit them, 
and the days that went by without so much as 
seeing the white flag of one were numerous, con- 
secutive, and continuous. 

Still-hunting was the only method employed. 
Driving or hunting with dogs had gone out be- 
fore it was really begun, because the dogs were 

[237 3 



THE OPEN SPACES 

shot instead of the deer as an expression of no 
confidence on the part of the settlers. One had 
to outgeneral the deer unaided and on his native 
heath. It required great patience and skill to 
do this. x'\nd there was no place more difficult 
for still-hunting than the interior of the big woods. 
Tracking in the snow, aside from getting a direc- 
tion, was almost impossible because of the multi- 
tude of tracks crossing and recrossing; and a 
general direction was often blocked by the trail 
running into a windfall, where travelling over 
fallen tree-trunks was again almost impossible. 
Even shooting in a windfall at a deer hurdling 
over tree-trunks was a great gamble, with the 
odds two to one against the gambler. Occasion- 
ally in the woods a fool-deer would get up lei- 
surely from a bed and, after stretching himself, 
would stand and look at the hunter, like a calf in 
a barn-yard, presenting a broadside shot; but 
more often you took a chance at a pair of horns 
going down over the far side of a fallen pine, or 
a bit of white tail disappearing around a tree- 
trunk. Your bullet would perhaps knock the 
bark off the tree-trunk, but the bark on the deer 
generally remained as firmly set as ever. 

I need not detail the methods employed in 
[238] 



THE DEER FAMILY 

still-hunting deer, since a member of the family- 
has devoted a book* to it. Much of his experi- 
ence was gained in the Wisconsin woods at just 
this time. I never cared much about hunting 
deer in the Wisconsin or Minnesota forests. The 
woods were always too thick and gloomy. The 
open and the sunlight have always been my pref- 
erence — a land where you can see game without 
interruption of sight Years ago there were 
plenty of deer in British Columbia, Washington, 
and Oregon, and I used to start them quite 
often while fishing the brooks in those countries; 
but I never hunted them. There are deer still 
in the White Mountains, the Adirondacks, the 
Catskills; and only a year ago I found an old 
doe in woods within twenty-five miles of New 
York that was too wild to have escaped from 
a park; but again, I never cared to shoot at any 
of them. 

In Scotland, in 1894 or thereabouts, I was taken 
out one morning to see a Caledonian forest and 
some red deer that were to be hunted therein. 
The forest turned out to be a hundred-acre patch 
of scrub pine on a side-hill. The deer were driven 
out of it by beaters and shot at by gunners stand- 

* The Still'Hunter, by T. S. Van Dyke, New York, 1920, 

[239] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

ing on the outside. It was very much like shoot- 
ing cattle along a country road. I tried to ex- 
plain my lack of sympathy by saying that as a 
boy I had known the big forests of the Northwest, 
where the sunlight and the snow both had diffi- 
culty in falling to the ground, so dense was the 
foliage and so great the stand of trees; and that 
I had known the great herds of buffalo and elk, 
and could not get excited over a few barnyard 
deer. But it was useless. I was listed in the nil 
admirari class. 

The deer of the Continent were also too domes- 
tic in habits to evoke much enthusiasm on my part. 
I never went from Berlin to Dresden without see- 
ing deer in the open fields, picking over turnips 
or cabbages like long-necked goats, and paying 
less attention to the train of cars than the horses 
on the highway. Of course these deer were accus- 
tomed to being fed during the winter and had 
become very tame. Shooting them seemed only 
a poor way of slaughtering them. In the forests 
of small pine in eastern Germany and in the woods 
of western Russia the deer were much shyer, and, 
in company with wild pigs and barnyard grouse, no 
doubt, at one time afforded imperial families great 
sport; but the tang of the wild was never theirs. 
C 240 ] 



THE DEER FAMILY 

European game, with the exception of the 
chamois (a delightful animal to watch, not to 
shoot), has always seemed to me too closely asso- 
ciated with the gamekeeper's feed-pan. In some 
of the countries the deer would keep in cover, but 
they were, nevertheless, rather tame, and in other 
countries game of any sort was apparently scarce. 
One day while climbing Monte Cavo, near Rome, 
a red fox came out of the woods, looked at me 
for a few moments like a strayed cat, and then 
turned back into the woods. He had evidently 
been chased by a hunt-party on the campagna 
and had got away with a whole hide. That was 
about as much game as I ever saw in Italy. In 
Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, and the Balkans I 
never saw anything shootable, except some of 
the hotel people and a few camels that had been 
recommended for tourist travel. That does not 
mean that I looked for game in the streets of 
Bucharest and Brusa, but it does mean that I 
could find no traces of game in some of the wild 
ends of the Near East. Doubtless it was there, 
but I did not know where or how to look for it. 

I knew my Montana country much better, and 
in the table-lands. Bad Lands, and scrub-pine 
regions of that State had no trouble in finding 
[241] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

deer in numbers. In the buffalo days no one 
bothered with them, and even elk were not 
greatly sought after; but as soon as the buffalo 
were exterminated attention was focussed upon 
the elk and deer, and their ranks began to thin 
out. Still, all through the eighties and nineties 
there were white-tailed deer in the river-bottoms, 
in the pines, and often on the table-lands about the 
broken trenches and washouts. In Custer County 
there were many of these huge trenches or sunken 
beds that ran across country sometimes for sev- 
eral miles. No one seemed able to explain them 
geologically or meteorologically — by fire, water, 
earthquake, or subsidence. They were great 
troughs, with precipitous sides that grew bushes 
and tall grasses of various kinds. The deer, in 
the early morning before sunrise, would be found 
browsing on these bushes, and I often stampeded 
them by riding at a sharp pace along the rim. 

When started the deer generally dropped down 
into the bed of the washout and bounded over 
the stones and bushes to get away. By jumping 
quickly from my horse I got running shots that 
were exciting because very difficult. The diffi- 
culty was to score. Shooting down Into a trench 
meant that nine times out of ten you would over- 
[242] 



THE DEER FAMILY 

shoot your mark unless the special precaution of 
holding low down was taken. And there was 
some very lively running to be reckoned with. 
When I hit, I counted myself lucky, but I did not 
hit often enough to grow conceited over my suc- 
cess. The rifle on running game was never so 
deadly as some of the shooters would have had 
us beHeve. There were feats of shooting that the 
rifle would not do, and a great many more feats 
that the man behind the rifle could not do, ex- 
cept occasionally. He would not generally admit 
this, but it was nevertheless quite true. 

Probably the easiest deer-shooting in the world 
was at one time to be had in the Coast Range 
of Southern California. It was practically open 
country, though there was enough cover in the 
chaparral, pinyons, and small oaks to hide deer 
from the most observing of still-hunters. The 
mule-deer, with something of the mountain-sheep 
about him, always loved this half-open country 
with its park-like spaces, and at one time would 
lie under the shade of the live oak in the heat of 
the day almost like a cow in an Eastern meadow. 
But if you looked for him there, with a rifle in 
hand, you would never find him. He was always 
somewhere else at your psychological moment. 
[243} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

I never saw any of the family lying down in 
these green pastures, and am merely telling the 
tale of my Still-Hunter brother, whose experience 
with deer in Southern California has been vastly 
greater than mine. In fact, he knew Southern 
California at one time so intimately that I think 
he had every mule-deer marked down on his par- 
ticular stamping-ground and knew just where to 
find him when he wanted him. By way of con- 
firmation I repeat his story of one year shooting 
at a mule-deer's head in the chaparral, seeing the 
deer shake his ears violently, and then bound away. 
The next year, in the same chaparral, he shot and 
killed the same deer, and found that his bullet 
of the year before had gone through the flaps of 
both the deer's ears and left small, round ear-holes. 

Putting holes in deer, either through their ears 
or elsewhere, never added much to my joy of 
living. The very few I killed were more embar- 
rassing to me dead than alive. I did not know 
what to do with the carcasses. When in the desert 
I made many strips of dried "jerky," but they 
weighed like lead, and I was glad to give them 
away to Mexicans and Indians. So I finally re- 
frained from shooting, hunted without a gun, 
and was just as much pleased when I corralled a 
[244]; 



THE DEER FAMILY 

deer in a bowl in the hills as though I had shot 
him. 

It is always amusing to watch an animal that 
is unconscious of being watched, though it may 
be unfair to the animal. And deer are always so 
graceful. They browse leisurely, reach up high 
by standing on their hind legs, rub their side or 
back against a tree-trunk, and then look all 
around for possible danger. They are always on 
the alert, with eyes straining for the slightest 
movement and nostrils twitching for any strange 
scent upon the breeze. Raise your head above 
the rock where you are hiding so much as a few 
inches and your deer springs as though shot at, 
strikes the ground with all four feet, bounds like 
a rubber ball, and keeps bounding until out of 
sight. 

The fawns seem to be rubber-shod at birth, 
and bound like the old ones without perhaps 
knowing why or how. It is astonishing that they 
can keep up with the mother, running by her side 
but never running into her, and running through 
chaparral, over loose rock, down canyons, up 
mountainsides, apparently without effort, but 
oh ! so fast ! The whole family, big and little, 
will rush across a talus of broken stone, contain- 
[245} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

ing rocks as large as a water-bucket, without so 
much as wrenching a dew-claw or scraping the 
hair from a fetlock. And when it is necessary 
to take a high jump, how prettily and easily they 
all rise to it ! Grace seems a quality of all the 
deer family. Even the dwarf Sonora deer runs 
and jumps in miniature like the larger mule- 
deer. But not so with elk and moose. The ac- 
tion is much heavier and often plunging and 
clumsy. 

Shooting elk always seemed something that 
called for apology. They are now very scarce, 
probably because they were never very quick- 
witted and lent themselves to being shot with 
great readiness. In Montana one day a band of 
eighteen filed in front of me, as might a bunch 
of range cattle on the way to water. They came 
my way for no reason that I could divine, and 
were so close that with my thirty-thirty rifle 
I could have shot two or three of them before 
they could have got out of the way; but I never 
so much as looked through the sights at them. 
Years ago in the Yellowstone Park they were so 
tame that they hung around the tents of the 
campers and were fed out of hand. Now the 
remnants of that park band drift south each 
[246} 



THE DEER FAMILY 

winter into Jackson's Hole, where the poachers 
find them. The elk in the open is scheduled for 
a disappearance. He is not fitted to survive ex- 
cept in a zoological garden. There he seems to 
flourish. 

The antelope has practically vanished. What 
a pity! In the eighties he was the life of the 
plains and the table-lands — the most graceful 
evanescent creature imaginable. But he always 
had an inordinate curiosity and could not resist 
looking and looking. One day, in turning the 
corner of a butte, in a rattle-and-bang cross- 
country wagon, I came up with three antelope 
that stood and looked at the horses and wagon, 
and heard my companion and myself talk, with 
the utmost composure. They were at attention, 
motionless, head up and eyes bulging, not fifty 
yards away. They did not move when I jumped 
out of the wagon, went to the back of it, and got 
out a rifle. I fired over their heads, and with that 
they took to flight. When they got started, they 
went like the wind for half a mile without stop- 
ping or looking back. Then, having attained a 
height on a side-hill, they bunched up together, 
faced about, and stood motionless looking at us 
for ten minutes. I fired another shot to the left 
[247] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

of them, but they did not move at the sight of 
the smoke. The chug of the bullet in the ground 
twenty feet from them started them into a run 
and they disappeared over the ridge. 

In an earlier year, in Custer County, Montana, 
when antelope were more plentiful, I remember 
shooting several and being greatly impressed 
with their strength and endurance. Unfortu- 
nately, I broke the foreleg of a young buck one 
day, but he went off with the rest of the band 
almost as rapidly as his companions. They all 
went along easily with legs that seemed somehow 
to open and shut like the springy blades of a pen- 
knife. At another time I shot an antelope from 
the side of a butte, he being somewhat below me 
on level ground and running rapidly at broadside 
to me. When I shot I distinctly heard the bullet 
strike the animal with a little thud. Instantly 
the run changed to a trot, which was kept up for 
a hundred yards with all the beauty and swift- 
ness of the world's greatest trotting-horse. Then 
the antelope sprang high in air and fell dead. I 
was at that time experimenting with expansive 
bullets that spread like a mushroom when they 
hit an animal, and much to my surprise I found 
that my trotting antelope had not only been shot 
[248] 



THE DEER FAMILY 

through the heart but that his heart had been 
torn literally to pieces by the expansive bullet. 
The shock of such a wound might be relied upon 
to produce immediate collapse, but the antelope 
lived several minutes after, and trotted his hun- 
dred yards before giving in. 

In the summer months there were fawns of 
different ages and sizes with every small band, but 
I never could find a fawn so young that it could 
not keep up with the band in running. They 
ran close together, like horses on a race-track, 
and when they stopped they would bunch up, 
stand still, and look, with the little fawns in the 
centre and the bucks on the outside. In the In- 
dian days when buffalo were stampeded the old 
bulls always ran on the outside and the cows 
and calves on the inside; but I never noticed 
this order of flight with antelope. The bucks, 
however, like the rams of the mountain-sheep, 
were always on the alert and ready to protect 
their progeny and their mates. At night they 
formed a ring against gray wolves and coyotes, 
very much as did the buffalo, and with their prong 
horns and sharp hoofs could make a good fight. 
But in the long run the wolves got many of 
them. 

[249} 



THE OPEN SPACES 

In the Montana country I occasionally found 
antelope down near the creeks or beside water- 
holes, but I never saw one of them drinking, and 
I doubt very much if they ever really drank any 
water. There was enough green grass and pulpy 
cactus to furnish moisture for them, and probably 
they subsisted on such foods, spurning the water 
that the white-tailed deer found so necessary. 
Down in the desert regions of lower Arizona and 
Sonora, where there were a few small bands of an- 
telope twenty-five years ago, the water conditions 
were still more stringent. I found antelope in 
places where there were no water-holes what- 
ever; but the ordinary lobed cactus and the cholla 
were growing on the slopes and mesas. Mule- 
deer and desert cattle eat these cacti and swallow 
even the spines, as the contents of their stomachs 
have often revealed; and I fancy the desert ante- 
lope did likewise. It is an odd thing that camp- 
ing for a week or ten days at a time by a water- 
hole in the desert — the only one perhaps within 
many miles — never revealed to me animals com- 
ing in at evening to drink, as pictured in African 
big-game stories. The desert animals in our Amer- 
ican deserts rather ignore the water-holes, giving 
them over to quail and flocks of mourning-doves. 
[250] 



THE DEER FAMILY 

The few desert antelope that I saw in western 
Sonora were fat enough but rather dusty and 
arid-looking, save for their white rumps. They 
seemed to like the flat valleys, and when near 
dry lake-beds they were often much mixed up in 
the mirage, took on long stilted legs, and had a 
spectral appearance. I never saw the antelope 
at the north do any marked flashing with the 
white erectile hairs of their rumps, but down in 
the deserts the antelope would turn and flash 
in the sunlght very often, especially in the early 
morning when the sun was just over the horizon. 
What this "flashing" signified I was not able to 
guess, but it certainly was not a confirmation 
of any protective-coloring theory. On the con- 
trary, I frequently got my first intimation of the 
antelope's presence by seeing these flashes of 
light. 

The small bands and meagre numbers of the 
desert antelope (they probably do not exist at 
the present time) tell the rather pitiful tale of 
the hunted being driven from the grass-lands, the 
lable-lands, the uplands, down into the far ends 
of the desert, seeking escape from the soft-nosed 
bullet. There is a similar story to be told regard- 
ing the mountain-sheep and the white goat. They 
[251] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

have receded into the snow-line— melted away 
from the meadows like the snow itself. Now 
you find them only in the inaccessible spots. 

In the eighties, in riding the northern buffalo 
range, occasionally, in a deep-set swale or a pot- 
hole in the hills, I stumbled upon some lone 
buffalo-bull, hiding by day from hunters and by 
night fighting off gray wolves, the last of his 
herd, surviving by prodigious strength, and de- 
termined to live on, though alone. They were 
always pitiful creatures, with wild staring eyes like 
those of the cattle being driven into the slaughter- 
pens at Chicago. They could fight off all natural 
enemies and increase their numbers,* but they 
could not stand up against the skin-hunter and 
his rifle. 

The rifle, the axe, the plough, and fire — the 
four riders of the modern apocalypse ! Some 
good has come from them, but has there not also 
been some hell following in their wake ? 

* I have written about the great buffalo herds in The Mountain, 
and need not repeat the tale here. 



[252] 



CHAPTER XIV 
WOLVES AND BEARS 

The deer, the antelope, and the sheep have 
had their numbers reduced, not alone by soft- 
nosed bullets, but by coyotes, wolves, and cou- 
gars. In the ancient days the gray wolves hung 
on the flank of a buffalo herd as remorselessly 
as the bluefish on the edge of a school of herring. 
They were always pulling down the young, the 
sick, and the crippled as opportunity offered. 
When the buffalo passed out, wolf energy was 
concentrated on the elk, antelope, and deer. To- 
day, with all wild game scarce and the wolf-pack 
greatly reduced in numbers, the lone outlier prowls 
about the diminished cattle-ranges and picks up 
what he can get. 

Originally he was not a sneaker but a chaser. 
He ran his game and caught it on the run. More- 
over, he ran with the pack, and when one gave 
out in a chase, another took his place in a relay 
that could overtake the fleetest and the strongest 
deer or antelope. This may seem an odd thought, 
because the wolf never was a swift runner, being 
[253] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

too short of leg and long of body; but he made 
up by endurance and possessed a terrible tenacity. 
He hung on and drove through and wore out by 
the long run. 

Being now quite alone in the world, the wolf 
varies his tactics and occasionally resorts to the 
strategy of stalking. In this way he comes near 
his quarry and then makes a sudden dash upon 
it. Possibly he has been taught something of 
this by his admirers, the coyotes, with whom he 
frequently consorts, or rather by whom he is fol- 
lowed. The pelican is usually accompanied in 
his flights and plunges by a gull that swoops at 
every fish the pelican catches. This is the estate 
of the wolf. The coyote hunts with him or be- 
hind him, and comes in for any of the carcass 
left over. He has a better nose and ear than the 
wolf, travels faster, and is much keener in hunt- 
ing up food supplies. He also helps the wolf by 
locating danger. The wolf is very strong, reason- 
ably brave, has a formidable jaw and teeth, and 
makes a savage attack, but he does not like dan- 
ger and will run rather than fight. Therein the 
coyote is in hearty accord with him, only the co- 
yote will run sooner and faster than the wolf. 

In the early cattle days in Montana and Wyo- 
[254] 



WOLVES AND BEARS 

ming, I saw much of the old gray wolf. The herds 
of cattle made better picking than the herds of 
buffalo, because less well-guarded. Always with 
the buffalo the bulls were on the lookout, and 
at night the small herds were formed in a ring, 
around the outside of which the bulls patrolled. 
The wolves never broke through those circles. 
The heads and horns of the bulls were not to be 
trifled with by any wolf, no matter what his age 
and strength. The buffalo-rings in the prairie 
soil, made by the milling bulls, were to be seen 
everywhere up to the coming of the plough. They 
looked a little like depressed circus-rings. With 
cattle there were never any such organized de- 
fenses — the cows and calves straggling in small 
bands, and the bulls fighting only when danger 
was thrust under their noses. The result was 
that the gray wolf and the coyote waxed fat on 
the weak and the young. 

Just how they manoeuvred I one day had an 
opportunity of witnessing. It was very early in 
the morning and I was sneaking up to the top of 
a divide, rifle in hand, with the idea of perhaps 
catching a deer off guard in the swale below. As 
I looked carefully over the top, instead of a deer, 
I saw a cow with a week-old calf beset by two 
[255] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

wolves. One of them was snapping at the cow's 
head and keeping her busy lunging at him, while 
the other was dashing at the calf to stampede it 
from the mother's side. It seemed a planned at- 
tack, and was successful; for as I watched it the 
second wolf got a snapping bite at the calf's hind 
quarters and so frightened it that it set off, with 
a bawl, across the prairie. That was exactly 
what the second wolf wanted. He took after it 
and bowled it clean over by jumping against it. 
Perhaps his jump was not wholly spontaneous or 
premeditated, for just before he sprang I shot at 
him. The bullet burned a ridge through the hair 
on his back and probably at the same time lent 
some erratic energy to his spring against the calf. 
At any rate, he quickly recognized that the 
pursuer was being pursued and started off on a 
swift run. My second bullet caught him in the 
rear and drove clear through him, coming out at 
his shoulder. He wilted in his tracks. The first 
wolf made a complete getaway, with my bullets 
doing no more harm than ripping up the ground 
about him. I went down to inspect the bawling 
calf (it was apparently unhurt), but, of course, 
the fool-cow, with characteristic lack of discrimi- 
nation, came at me, and drove me off the premises. 
[256] 



WOLVES AND BEARS 

The wolves, with the cattle-rustlers and the 
hard winters, had much to do with breaking up 
the large herds that grazed on the bufFalo-ranges 
in the early eighties. The toll of the wolves in 
calves alone produced great losses. Later on, 
when a State bounty was put on their heads, wolf- 
hunting became a border industry, with the re- 
sult of perceptibly diminishing the band. Guns 
and traps proved very effective. As the breed 
grew less, the survivors grew more wary. The 
wolf is not naturally very cunning, but he, never- 
theless, knows a hawk from a hernshaw when the 
wind is east. He soon learned to keep out of a 
trap and to decline poisoned meat. Anything 
that had been handled by a man he would 
walk warily around and sniff at contemptuously. 
Poison inserted with the end of a stick would 
sometimes deceive him, but he shied at finger- 
prints, and could smell out the human taint on 
a trap days after it had been set for him. 

I dare say the cats have just as keen noses as 
the dog or wolf family, but they seem to make less 
use of them. A wildcat or a lynx is more easily 
inveigled into a steel trap than a wolf. The 
wolves, moreover, have a way of gnawing off a 
leg caught in a trap, but I never heard of a cat 
[ 257 ] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

or a lynx doing anything so heroic. It will break 
its teeth biting on the steel, but it has not the 
necessary fortitude to bite into itself. The sense 
it makes most use of is that of sight. The cat's 
eye is large, very sensitive to light, and very ac- 
curate in its impression. Every one who has 
watched the ordinary house-cat sneaking on a 
bird or a squirrel knows how it will thrill and 
twitch at every slight movement of the prey. 
The wildcat is simply an enhancement of this. 

Having to hunt for a livelihood, the wildcat 
has keener eyes, sharper teeth and claws, stronger 
muscles, quicker movements than the domestic 
animal. As a staking machine it is a great suc- 
cess and the prey usually fares badly; but when 
it is hunted, the cat is neither very cunning nor 
very wary. Nor has it nine lives. My experi- 
ence goes no further than the shooting (and quick 
killing) of two cats, but the experience of my 
Still-Hunter brother goes a little fr.rther. It seems 
that, while in Southern California one winter 
and carrying out some experiments with explosive 
bullets, he came upon a wildcat sunning herself 
upon a huge flat rock, with three kittens playing 
around her. He shot at the old one, hit her in 
the neck, and the fragments of the explosive bullet 
[258] 



WOLVES AND BEARS 

killed all three of the kittens. Four cats with 
one rifle-ball ! At least that is the story as it 
came to me. 

The lynx is a sort of enlarged cubist cat in 
the sense that its lines are more angular, its 
paws squarer, its head and body more block- 
like than those of the wildcat. It looks formi- 
dable and is so to rabbits, squirrels, prairie-dogs, 
and birds; but it moves away from man at a 
hand-gallop with the first warning. I shot one 
specimen near Castle Creek, Arizona, as he was 
leisurely walking about a pot-hole in the rock 
and surveying the gray-green water contained 
therein. He did not act as though he wanted 
water to drink, and as a matter of fact the desert 
lynx never laps anything but blood; but he was 
surveying the water-hole, perhaps, with the idea 
that some frog or bird thereabouts might prove 
edible. When the bullet broke through his ribs, 
he gave a great bound into the air and fell on his 
back, dying with only a few kickings of the hind 
legs. He was the largest specimen I ever saw, and 
must have weighed some thirty pounds. Hung 
up by the heels on a tree, his square head and 
heavy paws reached down to an extraordinary 
length. His teeth indicated that he was very old, 
[259] 



THE OPEN SPACES 

but how many years he had put in killing quail 
and rabbits I could not determine. 

The largest member of the cat family in 
America is the puma or mountain-lion or cougar, 
which is still found almost everywhere in the 
Rocky Mountain regions. He is a true cat (and 
a real panther), having all the habits of a cat and 
leading a cat existence. He is a terror to almost 
all game, though he will not attack humanity un- 
less driven into a corner. He can fight savagely 
enough and, as he weighs nearly two hundred 
pounds and has claws and teeth of steel with 
muscles of whip-cord, he is not to be considered 
lightly. His teeth will go through the skull of a 
bloodhound without preface or apology, and his 
claws will rip the ear off of a deer as though it 
were made of brown paper. Horses and cattle 
hold the mountain-lion in deadly fear, and all the 
sheep, goats, and deer are in constant terror of 
him. 

The last one I saw was in the Cheetah Moun- 
tains of Montana. I was riding without a gun 
and he was prowling in some open pinyon timber. 
When he saw me he flattened on the ground pre- 
cisely like a house-cat when detected hunting in 
a meadow, but as I came nearer he started to 
[260] 



WOLVES AND BEARS 

run for a small pine — just like a house-cat again. 
My horse saw him and was terror-stricken at 
once, so I could not get very near him. The lion 
got up into the branches of the pine and there 
glared at me with half-opened mouth and flat- 
tened ears. He seemed nettled by the snortings 
of my horse and swung his tail from side to side, 
once more like a house-cat. But the horse be- 
haved so badly that I had to ride away before I 
had finished making observations. 

The cry of the mountain-lion is difficult to de- 
scribe, but one recognizes it quickly enough when 
he hears it. It is sometimes the scream but more 
often the yowl of an enormous cat. Heard in 
the night it is perturbing, notwithstanding your 
knowledge that the lion never attacks man. You 
know that, but does the lion know it ? He might 
forget. At least, you are a little uncomfortable 
about it. Your dog growls over it, but he makes 
no move to chase up the cry in the dark. He, 
too, is a bit nervous. Both you and the dog are 
aware that at night he has the advantage with his 
cat's eye. It is almost like the eye of an owl for 
seeing in the dark. You perhaps stir up the camp- 
fire hoping to locate its reflection in the eyes of 
the enemy, but the enemy is not so fooHsh as to 
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give you such a shot at him. He yowls and moves 
on, knowing very well that you cannot follow in 
the night. 

The round eyes of a panther, seen by the light 
of a camp-fire in the forest, have appeared in 
more than one book of adventure; but I never 
remember reading anything about the pig eyes 
of a bear peering through the underbrush. Yet 
the bear prowls by night and often comes into 
camp — something the panther never ventures 
upon. Since the days of the national parks the 
bear has even become a common nuisance, and 
no one now dares leave camp without everything 
edible being dulyr^^i^^^, for fear the bears, coyotes, 
ground-squirrels, and blue jays will loot the prem- 
ises. The common black bear has a great pen- 
chant for bacon, and the first thing he snuffs out 
in a camp is the bacon-box. And in opening the 
box, or any other receptacle, his paws are al- 
most as cunning as human hands. In fact, the 
ordinary black bear, next to the monkey, has 
more facility in manipulating provender than any 
animal in the kingdom. After watching one in 
the Yellowstone Park strip the meat from a ham- 
bone I came to the conclusion that his tooth and 
claw were equal to any hand and knife. It was 
an expert performance. 

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In the Minnesota days a cub-bear came to us 
one year as a present from Indian friends. The 
bear was not half-grown, having been run down 
and lassoed when its mother was shot. It grew 
up with the dogs, was adopted by the pack, ate 
with them, slept with them, played with them. 
Its chief love among the dogs was a small black- 
and-tan terrier which it dragged around the lawns 
by the scruff of the neck, much to the terrier's de- 
light, though he howled over it and pretended to 
be having a bad time. The terrier was not big 
enough to retaliate in kind by dragging the bear, 
but, after being mauled for half an hour, he would 
run up on the back porch of the house and catch 
a cat by the back of the neck and drag it down the 
steps and half-way around the house before the 
cat could put in an effectual resistance. It was 
so plainly a case of taking it out on the cat that 
even the bear watched the performance with a 
half-grin around his mouth. 

In winter all the dogs and the bear slept to- 
gether in a huge box banked over with snow and 
entered by a swinging door. It was an amusing 
sight, when the evening was cold, to see the whole 
band shivering in a circle in the snow, waiting 
for the bear to go into the box first. As soon as 
he went in the pointer, setter, spaniel, and terrier 
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all made a rush in his rear and pushed him up 
against the cold side of the box, the terrier en- 
sconcing himself between the bear's legs and the 
others crowding up against him as closely as pos- 
sible. The bear never seemed to resent being 
made a weather-shield and back-warmer, even 
when he became full-grown. He was always 
good-natured except when it came to a matter 
of food. Occasionally the dogs would try to 
steal his allowance of provender, and then a fore- 
paw would shoot out and cuff a dog's ear in a 
way that caused howling. Unfortunately, his 
temper did not improve with age as did his ap- 
petite. He had a way of breaking into the corn- 
cribs on moonlight nights by tearing off the board 
strips. There he would paw over many bushels 
of corn, eat as much as he could, and go to sleep 
on what was left. Finally, he cuffed and bit the 
dogs so much that we had to give him back to 
the Indians. 

The black bear is found almost everywhere 
west of the Mississippi, and I have seen and 
watched them often enough, but never had an 
inclination to shoot at one of them. They were 
too playful, too good-natured, too intelligent ! 
And to what purpose the shooting ? Bear-meat 
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WOLVES AND BEARS 

is about the rankest and greasiest food imagi- 
nable, and in the summer the hide is next to worth- 
less. I have always preferred them living in the 
woods to dead and spread upon a drawing-room 
floor. They be ong in the woods, are a part of 
it, fit into it perfectly, and add to it immensely — 
that is, if you are fortunate enough to see them 
there, off guard and playing. 

One day, in the Fraser River country, I was 
lying on a high flat rock eating my luncheon after 
a morning's fishing, when down to the stream, 
within thirty yards of me, came a black bear, 
quite unconscious of my existence. He looked 
about, walked up and down the shore-line, put 
his paw in the water and then licked the water 
off his paw. Presently he walked out on a tree- 
trunk lying in the stream, lay down on the trunk, 
and paddled in the water with both paws. Then 
he went back to the shore-line, waded along the 
brook, overturned with his paws huge boulders 
in the water, and snuffed at the shells on the bot- 
tom of them. Not satisfied with his water ex- 
ploration, he began turning over boulders on the 
shore. Something darted away from under one 
boulder — what it was I could not see — but I was 
amazed at the swiftness v/ith which the bear 
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rushed and struck at it. Evidently it eluded him 
and got into the water, for he gave up the stone- 
rolling and began patrolling the shore. Just then 
some scent from me must have come to him, for 
he jumped quickly and dashed into the wood at 
a stiff gallop. 

No sign or footprint of a grizzly ever came to 
me in the Fraser River country, though the Co- 
lumbian Rockies and foot-hills thereabouts are 
haunts of the silver-tip. Mexicans and Cali- 
fornians insist that the silver-tip is not a grizzly, 
and that the only Simon-pure grizzly lives (or 
once lived) in the lower Coast Range on the edge 
of the deserts. Doubtless the silver-tip is of the 
grizzly family, though not so ferocious as the one- 
time Southern bear. Many of them that hang 
about the hotel garbage-heaps in the national 
parks have become quite tame. Also they have 
grown quite fat, heavy, and clumsy. They are 
agile enough when they have to pick a living in 
the open. And many of those in the Big Horn 
Mountains are huge enough in size to give the 
hunter a shock at first sight. The mere flattened- 
down print of a silver-tip's paw in the dust has 
been known to excite nervousness in the beholder. 
But they are no more to be feared than the black 
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bear. They will not fight unless at bay and com- 
pelled to defend themselves. 

In this respect they are somewhat different 
from the Sonora or Southern California grizzly 
— perhaps at one time the most dangerous beast 
on the western continent. He no longer exists, 
except in story. The stories are probably not 
exaggerated. They are all founded on his great 
strength and swiftness. On the Sonora ranches 
I have heard from Yaki Indians that same tale, 
told fifty years ago in Southern California, of the 
grizzly in old Spanish days — how they caught old 
Ephraim in a trap and how, at the grand fiesta 
of the Corpus Christi, they tied him up heel and 
heel with the wildest bull in the country and 
then turned both of them loose. The stories all 
agreed that the grizzly instantly clapped one 
paw over the bulFs nose and with a quick wrench 
twisted and broke his neck before ever the bull 
could get his head down. 

There is no doubt about the grizzly's ability 
to do that very thing. A blow of his paw has 
been known to crush a man's skull like so much 
egg-shell. No animal could cope with him. And 
yet his strength was sometimes his weakness. 
Many years ago, after a cloudburst in the San 
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Bernardino Mountains, one of the swollen canyon 
rivers brought down a huge grizzly that had evi- 
dently presumed on his strength in swimming 
the stream, and had been swept off his feet and 
drowned in the torrent. He weighed a thousand 
pounds — so the tale ran. All grizzlies in story 
weigh at least a thousand pounds. 

I never saw but one on his native heath, and 
he looked to me as though he might weigh two 
or three tons — long tons at that. He was the 
biggest beast I ever saw. I was moving through 
some chaparral in the desert mountains, follow- 
ing a dim, half-broken deer trail, watching the 
ground for hoof-marks, seeing the paws of wolves 
over the tracks of the deer, wondering what those 
foolish wolves were thinking about in following 
so close upon the trail when the deer were always 
watching their back track. Presently, in look- 
ing up, I saw, not fifty yards away, an enormous 
grizzly standing on his hind legs and pawing down 
the little apples from a manzanita. I was well- 
equipped with a thirty-thirty rifle that I could 
depend upon, and I instantly brought it to my 
shoulder. 

I saw the butt of the bear's ear through the 
sights — can see it yet. But just then a puff of 
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WOLVES AND BEARS 

wind came in my face. The wind was blowing 
from him to me. He did not smell me. Neither 
did he see me or hear me. I was high up in the 
mountains, far removed from any human habita- 
tion, and I had no need for either bear-meat or 
bear-hide. It occurred to me very vividly, and 
with astonishing mental rapidity, that if I did 
not get into his ear and brain with the first shot, 
he would have my hide. I knew a shot through 
the heart would not stop him at once, not for 
ten minutes, and in that time he could tear me 
into small strips. The chaparral was dense. He 
could smash through it and I could not. I would 
be caught like a fly in a web. I lowered my rifle, 
backed out as noiselessly as I came, and left 
Ephraim to his idols — the manzanitas. I never 
regretted my discretion, and never told about 
seeing the bear. I hope he lived many years and 
was in death a credit to the grizzly family. 

The grizzly was always secure in the mountain 
chaparral. No man or dog dared follow him into 
that dry-stick thicket. Hunger alone brought 
him out, and through hunger he fell a victim to 
poison and soft-nosed bullets, until now his kind 
has ceased to exist. Occasionally one still sees 
his hide stretched upon a floor and hears, of winter 
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nights, the embroidered tales of his ferocity, swift- 
ness, and strength; and of the great fight he gave 
his conqueror. But is there no other tale than 
that to be told of him and of his kind ? Might 
it not be said in passing that all life in the open 
endures without flinching, and that in the end 
it dies in silence ? What soft-nosed bullet ever 
got a groan out of a grizzly, or a whimper out of 
a wolf ? What desert beast or bird or insect makes 
a cry when brought face to face with death ? 

By way of contrast it must have been observed 
that domestic animals can usually give tongue 
with the first approach of danger. A dog howls 
even before being hit, cattle and sheep bawl with 
fear; and even a horse, when badly frightened, 
will scream. As for man, the mighty destroyer, 
when danger or pain comes his way he can give 
forth a cry that is blood-curdling — the most ter- 
ror-stricken cry of any animal in the kingdom. 
The cry of the human becomes more intense, 
more fear-laden, more soul-piercing, as you come 
nearer to the higher and more refined strata of 
civilization. The Indian in warfare, in torture, 
in death, makes no sound; his lips are sealed and 
his face is immobile. Mere animal endurance, 
you will say. But would not humanity be the 
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WOLVES AND BEARS 

better if it should emulate the Indian in silent 
acceptance of the inevitable ? Was there ever 
any hope or help in the cry ? 

How does it happen that the life of the open 
accepts the order of nature so unprotestingly and 
goes its way to death without a sound, while the 
life of the city shudders and screams at the bare 
prospect ? Is not each, in measure, the product 
of its environment, and has not each been partly 
fashioned by its surroundings ? Had man always 
lived in the open and maintained a healthy 
animalism, he would perhaps have been better 
advised. He was born and equipped as an ex- 
cellent animal, but he sold his birthright for a 
mess of pottage called culture and took on fear 
and a whimper as a part of the bargain. 

Will he always be able to live up to his bargain, 
holding himself above and superior to nature ? 
Culture is something that requires teaching anew 
to each generation. Nature will not perpetuate 
it by inheritance. On the contrary, animalism 
is her initial endowment; it has been born and 
bred in the bone since the world began. Man 
cannot escape it if he would. Will not Nature 
in her own time and way bring man back to the 
earth ? And will not the race eventually be the 
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better for a regeneration in the open, in the free 
air, under the blue sky? 

Antaeus was a son of Poseidon, a mighty wres- 
tler whose strength was invincible so long as he 
remained in contact with his mother Earth. Hera- 
cles, discovering the secret of his strength, lifted 
him from the ground and crushed him in the air. 



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